My DD is 2 years 11 months. She is speech delayed and I have concerns about autism. This is going to be an absolute essay so thank you in advance if you read it all!
Bit of backstory: never had any concerns about her until she was 2.5. As a baby she was a good sleeper, good eater, crawled at 7/8 months, pointed at 10 months, walked at 12 months and her first words were around this time too. Incredibly sociable and confident, we always said she could ‘work a crowd’ and loved being in the thick of it. Good joint attention, always giving/showing and involving us in her play. Role play/pretend play was and still is her favourite type of play by far. No concerns from nursery, all progressing well including speech (this is around 18 months so still single words). I remember one of my NCT friends’ little boy running off to fetch the nappy bag when asked to and I thought “DD definitely wouldn’t do that” but I thought this was just due to her personality, I thought her general understanding seemed fine and I’d never ‘tested’ it as such. Not much contact with other children due to covid but nursery reported on her having lovely friendships/playing games with some of the slightly older girls, and she always absolutely loved seeing my niece who is a year older.
When she was 18 months she changed nurseries as I was due to go on maternity leave to have DS and her nursery (based near my work) would have been too far to drive to when I wasn’t working. Transition went well, on her first session they said she was very sociable and they could tell she’d been to nursery before, she didn’t want to leave! At the time due to covid parents had to queue up outside to pick up, and she used to wave and smile and say “bye!” to everyone in the queue. This was just her personality, she could be stroppy and grumpy for sure but she also loved people.
She was 22 months when DS was born and she wasn’t too fussed about him but didn’t hate him either and just sort of got on with it, didn’t seem upset at all. Over the next few months I noticed that although she was learning new single words all the time, she wasn’t putting sentences together. Her tantrums stepped up a gear too but then again she had just turned two. They weren’t concerned at her two year review so she didn’t get referred, so I guessed I shouldn’t be too concerned either and DH and I agreed to just wait and see. Around this time she got her report from nursery and they also noted her speech delay (she was talking a lot less at nursery than at home too) but were happy with her progress in other areas.
When she was around 2.5 I noticed she started to repeat little phrases to herself, mostly they seemed complete nonsense but sometimes they seemed to be from her TV programmes (although often changed slightly rather than verbatim). At first I thought it was cute but after some Googling everything mentioned echolalia and autism and it got my mind going into overdrive. Shortly after this I asked nursery how she was getting on and they said she preferred to be with the adults than the children and would only parallel play (they had not raised any concerns at all before this). I contacted the HV to ask her to refer us for speech therapy and mentioned nursery’s concerns too and HV did a Schedule of Growing Skills assessment confirming her delay in both speech and language (other areas were ok). She said she didn’t think it necessary to refer to a paed but that she’d put us on the waiting list for speech therapy and do a follow up assessment in a few months (this is next week).
In the meantime we contacted a private speech therapist who came to our house to do a session with DD. She noted that her understanding was behind which would be why her speech hadn’t developed further, I did mention my autism concerns but she was very confident this was not the case (I know SLTs cannot diagnose and she acknowledged this herself) due to her good social communication with DH and me. The therapist did note that DDs eye contact, although good with me and DH, was variable with her - but that when she simplified her language to the 2/3 word level DD responded positively and eye contact immediately increased. She felt that the social concerns at nursery/variable eye contact with strangers were due to her lack of understanding and made her wary of others.
I’m confused. On one hand but the Echolalia seems (according to Google!) to be a huge red flag (and she does do it a lot. She uses single words at home a lot to request things and point things out to us but the echolalia is frequent too), along with the parallel play. She also doesn’t always respond to my questions even when she is able to. She never used to ignore me. Also looking back, since around her second birthday she didn’t seem so interested in her cousin anymore. She got excited when I said she had arrived, but when she saw her she ran away and didn’t want to play. She’s been like this since. This has got me thinking about regressive autism - how is it that she’s now displaying potential ASD traits but never did in the past? Could she have this type of autism? I know that it is a real thing but I thought that these children would have always shown early delays in social communication, which I really think she never did (I don’t think I’m in denial!) maybe I’m looking back through rose tinted glasses but her personality seems so different now, she doesn’t seem as happy and it often seems like she’s not listening to me. She also used to love having books read to her (she still likes this occasionally) but these days she’s not so keen. I couldn’t even pinpoint when things changed, some time after her second birthday I think, but I guess it’s been gradual. Sometimes I wonder if the arrival of DS has affected her in some way, but she does love him (now…after ignoring him for a good few months!)
Sorry this is so long and thank you so much if you read until the end. I know no one on the internet can diagnose my child, I’m just looking for advice/experiences/any input really (and it also felt cathartic to get it all out! DH is supportive but doesn’t share my autism concerns)