You're correct in that I didn't see any one event with my son. One thing that I haven't talked about on this blog is that he was born with a physical issue that is often attributed to some of the same environmental factors people question with regard to autism, and it occurs during pregnancy. I'm not saying they are connected, but just that I don't rule out environmental factors in affecting him before birth or impacting the degree of autism he presented with at the time of diagnosis.

Anyway, that's quite a ramble, but thank you for your kind words.

That's interesting (and sad) that he has struggled with illness. I think about how my learning and communication abilities go down when I am sick, and it makes me think how hard it would be for a young child to grow and learn when they don't feel well. I know helping my son's physical issues has made a big difference for him (although he definitely still has neurological differences in social perception and communication).

Looking forward to seeing more posts from you!

And then to be hit with autism after struggling for almost three years with his development was like starting all over for me!

When my son was 2, we had several people concerned that he may be autistic. Out of your 11 points, we could probably check all 11 of them at the time. Having worked with ASD children in the public schools, I knew we needed to get whatever testing done right away so that we could help him. We contacted Early Intervention and they came out to our house several times for all sorts of tests and procedures. Initially, they were leaning toward saying “yes” to ASD. We filled out gobs of paper work, met with several different special education employees, and a few weeks later he had finished his tests. We met on the school campus and though he qualified for assistance in speech, he didn't qualify in any other area. Nebraska's laws dictate that you have to qualify in TWO areas to get assistance. But they also said that based on his tests, they felt strongly that he was not on the autistic spectrum as they had originally thought he might be. We were referred to a pediatrician (we didn't have one within a two hour drive) in a hospital and made the journey for more testing. We filled out paperwork and before the pediatrician even came in, she said she sat down and read our answers and was confident that she would be walking into a room that contained a child with autism. But she told us, quite openly, that after spending just 10 minutes with our son that she feel confident that he was not on the spectrum. But…after Early Intervention and our check-up with her, she'd be happy to send us for a third opinion to a pediatric psychologist. They started us on sign language (which was my foreign language in college, thankfully) and we agreed to a arrange a 2 hour visit for the next month with the psychologist. However, after receiving our paperwork and seeing how incredibly long and tedious the testing would be, I contacted a dear friend from another state who was a speech pathologist (working daily with many ASD children) just to make sure we weren't overdoing it with all of these tests so close together. Her advice, after he'd already gone through two testing groups, was to wait until he's at least 3 for more tests if he'd made no progress. She gave a whole list of reasons, but what it boiled down to was that many children are inappropriately diagnosed at 2. To be clinically diagnosed, there has to be proof of long-standing pattern that rules out naturally delayed development. She said the growing belief (probably because of multiple false diagnoses) in the special education field was that a pattern cannot be properly determined before the child turns 3 and that getting the early testing would work to our benefit as we now have great documentation to use for testing again and comparing results in another year. Our whole family tried going casein and gluten-free for a while, too. To be honest, that diet seemed to help ALL of us feel better (except that I had a lot of anxiety over trying to reproduce breads).

WOW, that's a lot of writing. Anyway, since being able to check almost all 11 of those points when he was 2 1/2, he's now down to about 3 points by the age 4 1/2, which is quite normal. He was extremely slow to develop speech and he still struggles with it at times. That frustrating in communication affected all sorts of other areas of development (i.e. not wanting to be around others, pointing or grunting at objects, etc.). He was also a bit sick…had allergy-type symptoms all the time, frequent ear infections, fevers, etc. At one point, his doctor was even worried that he might have leukemia. This could have also been a contributing factor since he wasn't feeling well. Poor thing.

Since all of the testing (both clinical and blood tests), the worries over Leukemia, the struggles with speech, the diet trials, and everything else…he seems to be right on track with only a little struggles with speech. Surprisingly, after all the testing was done, he potty trained himself in a couple days at the age of 2 1/2 (right when his little brother was born — that birth made a HUGE difference in his development).

Anyway, just wanted to swing by and see what you've been up to. It's been a few months since I've been here. I took a LOOONG sabbatical in September and am slowly getting back into the groove. :GRIN:

Thank you for this straightforward article. Obviously you do not relate your son's diagnosis to a particular event. And for encouraging parents with concerns to not be put off. Can't tell you how many children I have treated who were expected to “grow out of it”. Your best advice is very good.