I have an almost 2,5 yeah old DS.
To give a bit of context, he was born slightly premature and for the first few months suffered from bad reflux, so we were a bit used to the fact that a lot of things like gross motor movement were delayed- rolling, sitting, walking.
At 2 year old review we noted his speech was quite delayed, but we suspected it would be the case as up until that point we used two languages at home and bilingual kids tend to be behind and catch up later.
A few weeks later his nursery KW told us that she was concerned as he was not responding to his nameand whether we had his hearing checked. At the time, it did not ring any bells. The hearing test came back clear.
Fast forward 4 months... We have spent the last however many weeks confined to our house, DS was ill for two weeks before lockdown so the locdown plus those two weeks we have been sitting at home with me heavily pregnant. I was exhausted, so he spent lots of time on the phone.
The other day on the phone MIL on Skype noted how DS never maintains eye contact when around other people. We dont really have any friends with kids, so it's not something we noticed ourselves. I started googling, and ended up on NHS website about autism and literally froze- he ticks most of the boxes.
We have been observing him for the past few days and noted that:
- he really rarely responds to his name (although in nursery whenever I came to pick him up would call him and he would come running- we have made many tests and most of the time he does not respond))
- avoiding eye contact, sometimes when he is playing or sitting he will completely zone out and not pay any attention to us
-not smiling when we smile - which breaks my heart as he used to smile back at us in the most amazing way for months and months
- even before he was playing more on his own alongside other kids, not with them
- he has some vocab, mainly names of animals and he likes to randomly call them out of the context, so f.ex. he is walking around calling 'elephant', becaus ehe currently really likes elephants; he stopped using mummy and daddy :(
- no sentences really, except one or two like 'open please' to take him out of his seat
- he does not really play with toys except a few figures he likes to line up in different places, but he likes puzzles and started putting pieces in place
- he used to be much better at following instructions, which I did in my mother tongue, now seems to pay much less attention and does his own thing, he shows understanding of - lets go to the kitchen/lingin room/upstairs, but wont bring any objects or pick them up. He used to pick up shoes etc, no longer does it.
It almost feels like he sort of regressed over the past months, he used to do lots of songs and gestures, now stopped most of these.
In terms of pointing, he does not do much, but we have some picture books and he can identify and call out most animals in them, and if he sees some of them on the tv will call out and turn around to get our attention to check.
I actually cant say much about imaginative play, he uses remote control as a phone and in the past offered me tea from a little plastic cup and 'fed' his fav sheep cereal, but we have been crap at modelling anything with him, so I feel very guilty about that.
What made things worse are weeks in confinement of our house and the fact we have just had a new baby. It's like he is regressing. No longer doing things he used to and some of the markers of autism are getting worse (he used to respond to his name when we were around the park, now just runs ahead:/). Massive change since we brought his baby sis home as well, it's like he is in much worse mood and uncooperative to do whatever. He also only two weeks ago got moved into his own room (long story, but we coslept until then), so another big change he may not be copying well, although he has been sleeping well.
No sensory issues as far as we can tell.
He guides our hand if he wants us to go somewhere or take him somewhere.
I am very upset, as with the current situation there will be no assessment happening anytime soon (I know the queues are months/years long anyways, but we won't even be seen by GP to get a referral for anything, we rang them and they said they are not taking anyone in and that at any rate all appointments ar ebooked up until end of June), plus there will be a backlog of people waiting because of COVID. Considering a private assessment, but again nothing will happen on the next weeks/months because of lockdown. Also guilty, as some of the things (not responding to name) we counted as the terrible twos and bad moods instead of getting things going a bit earlier.
I suppose what I would love to ask is what would people suggest we could do at home for the time being that would be helpful? Any games/books/websites we could explore to help increase communication, or model certain behaviours? We ordered some PECS cards, trying to see if they will work or maybe too advanced for him?