Autism or hearing problem?

[kellbelle92]

I have a son who is 22 months he is wonderful , so smiley , affectionate and playful. He loves to be tickled and loves attention, however he doesn’t say a word , nothing that even sounds like a word even his babbling isn’t ‘proper’ babble.
He understands very little other than 3 things but all of those things I use visual ques for also.
He does flap a little a walks on his tip toes sometimes.
He responds to his name 50/50 depending on there being any background noise or anything else going on.
Now I have thought for months he is autistic, but after reading a thread the other day on someone’s child having high frequency hearing loss I am beginning to think this may be his problem. He has a hearing test in a months time. Also he is always getting ill with viral infections maybe something to do with fluid build up ??
Just a stab in the dark really was just wondering if anyone had anything similar with their children.
Thanks 😊

Anyone ? 😕

The flapping is a stim behaviour, I believe the toe walking is a sensory (avoidant?) behaviour.

My ds would not always respond to his name, though I don’t recall being concerned about this until he was older than your ds. We self referred for a hearing test though I was 99% sure there was nothing wrong with his hearing as he could hear me take out a key when he was in the other side of the house. His hearing was absolutely fine. What’s your gut feeling on his hearing?

Have you spoken to the HV about your concerns? Have you been given any speech and language support? If not I would recommend taking him to a SALT drop in clinic if your area has them. The Hanen books are very good for supporting communication.

Hi thanks for replying 😊
I’m really half and half with the hearing thing , some days he seems less attentive than others.
Does your ds have autism ? Ye spoke to hv they have been rubbish to be honest. But finally been referred to SALT got first appointment in January. He walked and crawled early it’s literally just speech and communication that there seems to be a barrier there for him 😕

Yes, my ds does have autism. He was diagnosed shortly before he turned 4. Of course it’s possible to have speech delay without autism.

I’m no expert, and autistic children vary enormously but red flags include: social communication difficulties, lack of joint attention, repetitive behaviours, losing skills, eating issues, sleeping issues and other sensory difficulties. My ds has had all of these at some point. He did not have speech delay but was a little late to crawl and walk.

The hearing test and SALT will hopefully help clarify if anything is going on. In the meantime, encourage communication by using his interests to get his attention. Resist the urge to ask him questions and narrate what you (and he) are doing. Be as engaging as you can while you play with him.

The Nurturing Neurodiversity YouTube channel may be interesting for you. She has a 4yo with autism and a 2yo with speech delay who she thinks is probably neurotypical. She has lots of informative videos.

Hearing problems are much more common than autism, and an obvious first step to look at with a late talker. Of course a child can have both gummy ears and autism. Be aware there is a tendency with hearing tests to be told "come back in 3 months" because temporary hearing difficulties are so common when they have coughs and colds. In the meantime, simplifying and enunciating what you say, and giving him plenty of opportunities to lead play while you perhaps just describe what he's doing, are good strategies whether his hearing is compromised or not. It is so tempting to take the lead ("here's the red car. Can you say 'car'? Now Mummy's putting it in the garage. Can you take it out? Can you drive the car down the road? Brm brm, good boy". I'm exaggerating but I used to do WAY too much of that with DS!

I'm no expert but I think that toe walking is fairly common in NT children at a particular developmental stage. And he is still very young. So you're right to be cautious, but also right to be open to other possibilities. He might just need grommets. The key is that you have noticed that there's an issue with his receptive language - not just his expressive language - and you are getting him tested. I'm afraid the rest will need to wait until after those tests, and possibly longer than that. They thought my son's speech delay was due to gunky ears when he was a toddler too. He "caught up", went through infant school as a high flyer, and was only diagnosed with autism at 9.

Yes. Ds (now 4) was sort of similar around age 2; I thought for a while (and the teachers at preschool hinted too) that he could be autistic due to him ticking a lot of the boxes, but there were just some pieces that didn't add up.

Turns out he has auditory processing issues - often presents after hearing issues (infections etc) but can affect lots of kids - it also gets seen a lot with kids who have ADHD and are on the spectrum so it's easy confused / misdiagnosed. The issue with it is its hard to diagnose before about age 4, and you can have it and have a standard hearing test and still 'pass'

What we saw / see; verbal but at one point it was repetitive speech and stuff that made no sense (inserting what he 'thought' you wanted him to say) his ability to listen, or seem like he was, really concerned me, as he basically used to blank me (and this si what raised the red flags) Turns out he couldn't hear certain frequencies (women's voices are trickier) and cant distinguish between sounds in words so he'll often pick up words from songs etc but he cant figure out what they're actually meant to sound like.

The other issue is how long it takes language to process - sometimes its straight away, other times it can be ~10 minutes, made more difficult in noisy situations like a large classroom - this is where we see the blank / no response from him

He also has sensory processing issues (which early on were made worse by the auditory stuff), which again presents very similarly to autism. Hates / hated loud noises / frequencies (but only some stuff) and would often react by rolling around on the floor seeking regulation / input

All of this has calmed down somewhat after ~2 years of speech and OT intervention (we're not in the UK) but we are still working on a lot of stuff. Happy to share more details