Hi everyone
Looking for advice/experiences and really appreciative of any thoughts.
My son recently moved into the downstairs room in nursery and I received his settling in report which highlighted that he doesn’t always respond to his name which they would monitor, and that he needed help building friendships. I went in for a meeting and the nursery raised a couple of other things face to face - that he really likes the colour red, and that he does echo back what you say to him sometimes.
Any concerns really came out of the blue for me. We do have a family history of autism on one side and so I WAS watching him like a hawk, and he met all his early milestones on time - imitation, responding to his name (though he did become a bit inconsistent about that but I put it down to his strong will), waving, pointing, lifting arms up to be lifted, single words and then sentences on schedule, no repetitive movements etc, good sleeping/eating, not easily overwhelmed. And then as I got to know him a bit more as his personality blossomed I just accepted him as a very busy and interested boy who was slightly less interested in fine motor! He also - when I’m there, at least- LOVES playing with other children and he’ll initiate play by laughing towards them and then copying them and laughing or trying to get them to copy him, playing peek a boo etc.
I know the nursery wouldn’t raise this with me unduly and my main concern is if he is autistic then giving him the right support asap. All I want for him is to be happy and so anything we can do early intervention-wise to make that happen I want to do it.
So here’s a quick summary of where I would say he’s at from my experience and having watched him since the nursery assessment and really thought about his speech and language.
- He’s meeting all the speech and language milestones. I’ve looked at the ASQ 25 month questionnaire and he would pass. He would score on schedule for the 24 month ASQ-SE and I think he might pass M-chat, it would depend how anxious I was feeling probably!
- He can use probably up to 4-5 word sentences and as he was learning little phrases it was quite funny he’d be dropping off to sleep saying “mummy do it, daddy do it, (friends name) do it”. He did progress from single words to two words to longer sentences and the longer sentences have partly been little phases he’s picked up like “kick your legs” but hes putting them together in an original way. “Mummy sit down on the bed and kick your legs”
- he took a little while to use yes and no. He has “no” down but if I say “do you want to go on the swing” two thirds of the time he’ll reply “on the swing” instead of yes. To be fair I don’t think I’ve really thought about this and corrected it, so I’m going to from now on.
- I also hadn’t noticed this before but he doesn’t really ask questions. He would use “what’s this “ around 18 months but then it has become “it’s this” which we do answer and again we haven’t been consistent in correcting but we will. We play a game “where’s mummy” and he’ll call that and I’ll jump out but he doesn’t use that to ask my husband where I am he’ll just say he wants me. “Mummyyyy”
- Another thing is eye contact. This is going to sound mad but I would be interested if any parents had noticed this happening with their babies/children. So when he was 9 weeks old, overnight he went from constant eye contact to not looking at us at all, it lasted about a week. At the time it was so abrupt and noticeable it was quite scary. I had thought maybe in retrospect his vision extended in range that week and he was looking at his surroundings but I’ve never met another parent who described the same thing. He turned into a really smiley chatty baby and the eye contact returned and seemed typical, though he was always extremely observant of his environment, and then around nine months he had another phase which lasted a bit longer when again he was looking at us less and most of our interaction and eye contact was at the table. Again, it passed and we came to the conclusion this happens when he’s going through a big period of development. A week ago he had a big sleep change and his language has been coming on in leaps and bounds and again his eye contact has lessened slightly.
- He really does love other people a lot especially other children and as I said above is usually the one to initiate play. He does imaginative play and at the moment is incredibly into finding “tunnels”, every straight line is a train track. He also plays with Peppa on the “slide “ or washes his bath toys hair etc
- Although I would agree with nursery that red is his favourite colour, at home it’s certainly not something we’ve thought was obsessive or unexpected. He prefers to draw with the red crayon but other than that I really hadn’t noticed it. The new room at nursery is crowded and he’s the youngest by at least two months and he moved down on his own. I don’t know if potentially it’s more apparent there because he’s less settled.
- geneslly he is a really happy energetic little boy who loves nothing more than climbing, jumping, dancing, music. He laughs heartily at interactions especially with other children and running and chasing together is his favourite thing. He’s been less interested in fine motor activities and it’s hard to get him to pursue something he finds difficult, though we’ve seen him progress on that.
Just really interested in whether this chimes with anyone else’s experience and if you do suspect he might have ASD what support we could put in place now? I’m going to encourage questions and correct him on not saying “yes”. I know he’s really young so all of those language points I had never thought about because obviously typically-developing children do parrot back what you say too so I thought we were just in that stage still. I will obviously raise this at the two year check but I’m an action-take and like to have a plan and don’t want to let him down!
Given he’s so socially motivated I am concerned that if he later finds interaction difficult this will be a source of anxiety and upset for him so any tips on helping with that would be amazing. He’s with a childminder one day a week which is smaller and he has friends who the childminder says he plays “well” with. I am considering whether it might be better to send him there a bigger proportion of the time so he definitely gets that social interaction.
That’s a lot of info. Thank you so much in advance.