Progress from a toddler ASD

[hol92]

Hi all I have a two year old (and 3 months) he’s in his own world alot, paces a lot, stims by flapping his arms and throwing himself back, he also eye tracks alot and has 0 words and little understanding… I think because he hasn’t made much progression in the past year I’m now overthinking the future and it’s giving me awful anxiety!
he’s so very cuddly and always happy which deep down I know is the main thing but it doesn’t stop the worry !
I know that all autistic children are different but I just wondered if anyone has an older autistic child and what age roughly they started to progress

thank you so much ❤️

Hi op, i have 8 year old on the spectrum. I cant remember how he was at your ds age as by 18 months old i knew something was not right despite every one telling me he was a boy and its normal for him to be silent.

He said his first words at 3, and autism wasnt diagnosed due to him also cuddly and happy and giving eye contact while playing. They told me to wait and see. I couldn't and got him private aba sessions that focused om speech and receptive language.

It was going well and he started labeling items and spoke at a 1 year olds level. Covid hit sessions stoppedand we moved to abroad and that country had stricter rules that lasted almost 2 years and online therapy sessions or nursery was not an option as he had no attention span and such poor receptive language skills.

Fast forward to us moving to another country due to dh job, he was 5 uears old i think and not progressed much from age 3 so i knew i had to find some where he could learn. With no governmental assistance it was hard but managed to find a centre where he could attend speech and aba therapy. I also noticed his stimmming increased, mostly vocal stimmming so i switched him to dairy free gluten free diet just to see if it helped. I dont know if it helped with his development but definitely with his tummy issues. He had constant diarrhea and would get his own pullup out of the drawer to do a numver 2 despite being potty trained and dry at night.

After that he want toilet just fine. Fast forward to now though his speech is slow and steadily improving with some plateaus, his receptive language is age appropriate. He answers simple questions e.g his name, siblings names and other family members, where he lives and can tell us what he wants to do for the day. He has a long way to go as he Can say he doesnt want to go to school but cant tell me why. He struggles with why questions. We couldn't be moreproud of him as a family and definitely he is still that sweet cuddly boy he was at you ds's age.

I know no 2 children are the same especially when on the spectrum, but they always learn and progress no matter how little. Celebrate all his little wins im sure he will do just fine as you are his mum and already trying.

Hiya i have a 4.5 yr old nearly- he was a massive flapper- things we did to help his development..and it all started around 2.5 but we changed a few things

1. gluten free mainly dairy free (he loves cheese) goats milk and a lot less sugar and processed food & reduced seed oils supplements to help nutrional deficines- iron, zinc, magnesium, vit d, omega 3 (he takes mighty kids atm)
2. looked into gestalt language processing
3. went with child led therapy approach- whatever he liked we encouraged and went along with

he has come leaps and bounds - hes social fun interactive playful and cheeky. He has a bit of a language delay but more so much why questions and or open questions (he will give a short answer not so detailed but then when he can formulate the sentence he will answer easily) nursery have said hes almost like any other child just with a few extra needs, i used to be very worried about his progress but his speech has come on a lot this past year

@peanutForever so glad your little ones doing so well. I forgot about supplements i give my ds the same. Hes also a gestalt language processor. I used to worry all the time too the more hes progressing no matter how small, the less i worry.

@peanutForever hi. Sorry to jump on but my son sounds really similar to yours. He’s 4 in October. He’s always been verbal but language didn’t develop like my older NT son. My boy is on the pathway now and has private speech therapy. When did you feel things started to click for your boy. My son can label so many things, can describe things now so if I said ‘what’s the boy doing’ he can say ‘kick the ball’ can say ‘I want chocolate please mummy’ I think he’s a GLP too. X

@ag12345i think honestly around may time his nursery said his language has really come on- just after he turned 4 - he also managed to unlock or free some connecting words from gestalts so it helped his language became a lot more coherent and he started to become really inquisitive espesh from reading and asking random questions like...

whats this called mummy? Sounds weird but once he said why are doggys soft? and that convo led to us going through a load of textures of doggies which he then instantly started applying to materials/fabrics and skin and fruit and suddenly from that he was able to say things like wet, cold, smooth, soft from there he started to say what he likes and doesnt like about them and then how it made him feel- Sounds daft but it really helped kind of get a chain of events going from a language perspective and he was able to suddenly say things like i dont like wet shoes makes me feel icky mummy lol

I think my son has already began unlocking words from gesalts. Today he couldn’t open the gate upstairs and was rattling it and said ‘ah stupid gate’ later his iPad died and he said ‘stupid ipad’ I have no idea where he’s got it from because we don’t use the word stupid in our house lol. I do feel like language is clicking for him now too. He was playing with number blocks the other day and he said ‘help me put it together’
I nearly fell off my chair. X