family history of asd - development checks?

[LondonKiwiMum]

hi, i hope no one minds me posting this here, i am not sure if this is the best place to put this thread.

i recently became aware what seems to be a strong family history of asd/autism. i am adopted and didn't have access to my history before. without going into massive detail, the links are close to me as the most affected people are my biological brother and first cousins on one side of my family. also, it can be traced back through 3 generations to my biological grandfather. only males appear to be affected.

i have a DD who is 21 months and a newborn DS.

assuming there is a hereditary component (or is there really?), what routine or special checks should i ensure they get to monitor their development? even if such tests did show the likelihood of their being asd, do early intervention therapies make any difference ?

i appreciate these are questions to which there is unlikely to be a clear answer or on which there may be differing views. i have this information about family history without a lot of the relevant context and would appreciate some thoughts on how to organise my thinking on this point esp if i need to be monitoring development particularly closely.

any guidance would be gratefully appreciated.

Have you got any concerns about your DD? 21 months is old enough to show lots of symptoms of ASD.

I think all 2 year olds get a dev check, and suspicions about ASD are often raised by the HV at that check. I would just tell your HV at the 2 year check that there is a strong family history, and can she notice anything?

But TBH I'd expect you to notice stuff first...

DH has Aspergers and so do a lot of his family. I said to the HV when DS1 was born and she kept a close eye on him and DS2. I noticed DS1 had ASD before she did though.

Girls present very differently to boys are are normally harder to spot. I guess classic signs are speech delay or unusual speech, toe walking, hand flapping, echo speech, not wanting/not interested in other people unless to get their own needs met, lack of eye contact, and lack of emapathy. These are main things but children with ASD are all so different, even my two!!

If it helps dd2 got the bricks at two year check and when asked to build a tower she lined them up in colour order!

hi thanks for your feedback. i didn't have any particular concerns about dd, although her speech has been delayed. we had thought this was due to her being raised bilingually, which does delay speech development (two sets of rules to process). she is now making short sentences and seems to be OK although i will ask the hv to check if she has the kind of vacb we would expect at this point. i mentioned my concern to the hv and asked for her to be scheduled for the 2 year check as she is new to the UK system and it would be good for her to be checked as a matter of good order.

she does get a little repetitive, but i have put this down to ordinary toddlerness eg she can't walk past our vacuum even when it is off without saying "all done, all done" as she hates the noise and wants it to be over. she is generally friendly and adaptable, and likes making people happy. i would say she is very empathetic as she picks up on people's moods and tries to comfort people who are upset.

i did not mention in my original post, one sister has an auditory processing problems as well, but this presented early as her speech was very delayed.

oops, not "vacb", i meant vocab!

i should also explain, we are new to the uk and have not previously had any checks in our old system.