Hi all,
My DS is 27 months and for a while now I've been getting a bit concerned about whether her might have autism or ASD. I work with teenagers, a few of whom are affected by Aspergers and autism, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on recognising the symptoms displayed by older children / young people but it's a very different ball game with a toddler!
He is very sociable, he can meet your eye, he tolerates cuddles (tho he will only actively seek out a hug maybe once a day for about 10 seconds) and, in a way, he interacts quite well (though non-verbally) with other kids when he's out and about, with my friends kids or at his childminders. So far, so good.
However, he doesn't talk. He has a vocabulary of maybe up to 50 words but he only uses a handful of them and he doesn't even use those consistently and he never strings words together into a sentence. The health visitor saw him last month and she has referred him to a speech therapist and also to have his hearing checked because he had some issues around glue ear last year. DS also doesn't really communicate as such - if you ask him to do something a lot of the time he just kind of ignores you, so it's hard to say whether he's ignoring you because he doesn't want to do it or because he genuinely doesn't understand.
His temper tantrums are ferocious, even being used to working with teenagers with very challenging behavioural issues (the hard nuts who have all been kicked out of school and are in trouble with the police / addicted to drugs etc - I am genuinely not inexperienced at dealing with challenging tantrums etc) I am still often afraid to take DS out of the house on my own because it is exhausting, there's always a screaming match and it's just very hard to handle because he's big for his age and very strong and he kicks, smacks and screams the place down. Even with DH or my mum in tow, taking him to Tesco or swimming or anything is a disaster a lot of the time. He doesn't do a lot of imaginative or role play, a bit with his toy cars where he makes car sounds and says beep beep. He also gets OBSESSED with things, like watching videos on my phone and literally wants to do the same thing for hours and hours on end, going crazy if you try and distract him from it or get him to do something else
He's a really bright kid and understands how everything works, he's great at putting puzzles together and it's very hard to pull the wool over his eyes and he really loves music and books. He's a really funny, sweet little thing about half the time, a normal toddler some of the time and an uncontrollable frustrated seething mini monster the rest of the time. I got a score of 6 on M-CHAT (www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/screen-your-child) which means, apparently, an elevated risk.
So should I be concerned? What (if any) should my next step be?