Worried about autism

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I just wanted to point out that it is possible that he is not "changing his mind and deciding to focus on something else." My son has pretty severe attention deficits, my daughter to a lesser degree, (and to be honest, me too) and an important thing to note with neurobehavioral development-type "attention deficits" (common in autism and adhd), is that it isn't that they can't pay attention. It is that they cannot control what they pay attention to. He may actually be very happy to see you and may have decided to crawl toward you to see you, but then that shiny object in the corner caught his eye and he cannot stay focused on his original goal. His entire attention swings to that shiny object in the corner. NT folks can disregard distractions and remain focused on the goal. People with these kind of attention issues cannot. Likewise, sometimes my kids will remain focused on things despite my attempts to distract them (remember, they cannot CONTROL what they attend to very well), so sometimes I may need to say their names many times to even get my voice to register over the attention-grabbing, mesmerizing forces of Minecraft.

I point this out, because if your son does have some kind of neurobehavioral development issue (ASD, ADHD, etc), it will be helpful to you to start "framing" things differently. I find that the more I "frame" in a way that is not emotionally-provoking (he decided not to come to you vs. his attention was grabbed without his permission), the better I am able to remain detached enough to address issues from a rational place instead of an emotional one. It helps me become an outside observer instead of a parent who is freaking out because I can't understand why my kid is doing what he/she is doing. It also helps me figure out what I need to do (for example, my voice needs to become the shiniest object in the room to get their attention...so I sing their names or start with a riddle or say something completely out of place or shocking, or turn off the TV) to "combat" their neurologically-based tendencies. This has been a very helpful thing for me.

Others have given really excellent advice. Very excellent advice.

At this point, I think you're hypervigilant. I'm guilty of the same (because autism does run in my family, both sides). Current parenting "wisdom" certainly feeds that particular paranoia.

Right now, he sounds A LOT like my son... Who I was absolutely convinced was autistic... Who turned out to be a somewhat introverted kid with ADHD.

Please bear in mind (and yes, I know this sounds asinine, but I really do think that we worry too much about it) that all those milestones are an average. They take all typically developing babies into account, both male and female. Boys do tend to develop the physical end of the scale before the social; girls tend to run the other way around.

If you're really bothered by the lack of interest in being social, you can always keep pushing it with him. Not to an insane extent, but-- when you really want to cuddle, make him cuddle. Keep turning his face toward you (or putting your face in his line of sight). Not for hours a day or anything-- no infant, no matter how profoundly autistic, needs a part-time job. Just a bit here and a bit there, ten or fifteen minutes at a go. Might help engage his wiring. At least it will make you feel like you're doing something.

If he's annoyed or disinterested, push it a little bit, but not too hard. If he's distressed (you'll know the difference, by now you probably already do), STOP. You can always try again later. If he's an introvert (or for that matter a little autistic), you're not going to make an extrovert out of him, ever, no matter what you do. That's not the goal (no matter how much society tells us to value extroversion). Attempting to force radical change of nature will just make an introvert with a negatively distorted self-image. The goal is to create, over a period spanning more than 10 years, an introvert who's capable of doing extroverted crap when necessary.

If he does turn out to have himself a serving of some kind of alphabet soup, the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO FOR HIM IS NOT FREAK OUT. The attitude you're looking for is, "OK, my kid came equipped with WXYZ. Awright. I need to wash the dishes and do some laundry. I wonder if he'd like that book over there." Do not start thinking about cures and limited horizons and letting all those scary statistics start a death march in your head. Those scary statistics are misleading. Sounds terrible when they say that only 19% of kids with ADHD finish college, right?? Sounds a little less alarming when you find out that 24% of "normal" kids finish college. Statistics can be and regularly are twisted to manipulate people into consuming stuff (or donating to stuff-- on that subject, Autism Speaks might or might not want to help out the parents of autistic kids; however, they definitely want to get into the wallets of everyone who sees one of their ads), and it works because it all sounds scientific.

Allowing that s**t to get a grip on you is the most damaging thing you can possibly do. It's worse than doing nothing. Fear is the mind-killer. Whatever is or is not going on with your kid, he needs a mama who's not tearing herself up with grim possibilities.

I have learned this the hard way. I knew better, and I still set out to "fix" my kid. Three years later, he's making Bs in school and is mostly a happy, functional, somewhat hyperactive kid. His biggest issues, at this point-- the ones that take up time and arguing and repeated correction and summers at the therapist's office, the ones I find myself doing "field therapy" for almost every day-- aren't ADHD issues at all. They're anxiety issues that stem from all the ways I got in his face and in his s**t and tried to reorder his life around "fixing the disorder."

Don't do that. Don't do it to him, don't do it to yourself, don't do it to your husband. Tell yourself that, if he does have something, it's probably pretty mild. The world is full of people with pretty mild Something-Or-Other (autism certainly included) who grew up without any intervention at all, other than what was provided by living life, hopefully with a modicum of common sense. You interact with them every day-- and you don't even realize you're doing it. They lived, they learned, and (however awkward they might have been when they were kids) they're honestly pretty normal now.

@BuyerBeware - amazing post, thank you so much. Really made me feel better.
Just wanted to post and update and perhaps request some more feedback from all you lovely contributors on this forum.
My son just turned 9 months and started babbling. I guess better late than never. The thing is, I'm still not getting any kind of back-and-forth communication with him - when he babbles it's mostly to himself, if I look at him he will stop.
Still no imitation of any kind - verbal or non-verbal. He will follow me around and look at me if I get down on knees and start crawling. He will smile or laugh if I do something he finds funny. But still it's like he doesn't know how to communicate with me. He doesn't give us hunger queues (we basically guess he's hungry when he's fussy and it's been long enough), he doesn't really put his hands up to be picked up. If I hand him something he will rarely look at me, just at the object. He will never attempt to hand it back.

Thanks again for all your wonderful input.

I'd say this: one thing to think about is that autism is a developmental delay. From your description, it sounds like your son has some kind of delay in development, right? Meaning that he is progressing (which is great, nice to hear that he's babbling) but not at the usual pace or with the usual progression.

I think it's worth getting a professional opinion, and if they take a wait-and-see approach, ask for specifically what you are supposed to look for and when the cutoff is - and then what exactly they recommend that you do or who they will refer you to if that doesn't happen.

My son skated just at the edge of the cutoff (except for talking, where he was early - which can ALSO be a sign of autism, used to be one criterion for Asperger Syndrome) for everything. Our pediatrician kept shrugging it off - if I had to do it over again, I'd have insisted on a developmental pediatrician checkup.

Already been to a developmental pediatrician at 8 months.
They basically said he's on track with some delay in speech but not significant and they concluded with "I wouldn't worry".
My concern is since it's so hard to diagnose at this age, I doubt any professional would be willing to either confirm / rule out my suspicion.

Good - you did the right thing with that. I will say this: many, many of us got noncommittal responses when we brought up concerns; I think you should trust your gut.

As was mentioned upthread, there are specialists who can diagnose children under a year old, and I would guess you could find one if you worked at it - have you contacted your local Child Find center? (are you in the US?) See http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/,root ... 00%252E111, and also http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/ei.index.htm

As important as early intervention can be, though, I think there is undue pressure on parents to get it RIGHT NOW - while it is ideal to get started as early as you can, there is plenty of wiggle room for treatment to be effective. In other words, since there is a wait and see approach by the professionals going on, I think you're OK as long as you keep asking for re-evaluations as needed as your child goes through various developemtal jumps.

Btw here's the link to our birth story, which if he does turn out to have something I believe that's the root cause as we don't have ASD in the family.

@BuyerBeware could you tell me more about your son with ADHD and some of the early symptoms you noticed?
My biggest concern is there is no back-and-forth type of play/communication of any kind.

He was constantly touching, tasting, and testing. EVERYTHING. Right down to the rocks in the yard (at that time, our yard was almost entirely comprised of flint gravel), which gave him a mouthful of trashed teeth by 2 years of age. At the time, I knew that hyperactivity and tactile (digital or oral) perseveration were signs of autism (which I had genetic reason to suspect, and did not think I had reason to suspect ADHD). He had either an overexaggerated or completely non-existent sense of danger until he was about 2 (being terrified to sleep alone, to the point of having to nap in the room I was working in if I wanted him to sleep). That was me all over as a kid-- terrified to sleep alone or call up a friend on the phone, and at the same time utterly fearless about plunging into the creek totally by myself, walking all over town (or even 5 miles along US250 to a friend's house) alone, or climbing a 20-foot cliff alone with no gear but my sneakers). He wanted to be near me but not necessarily touching me (unless he was hungry). He despised even being looked at by strangers, seemed completely oblivious to simple commands like "NO" (my older child might not have been willing to COMPLY, but she took notice-- hyperfocus in ADHD differs somewhat from hyperfocus in autism, but hyperfocus is still a common trait of ADHD), and avoided/made only fleeting eye contact (which I now realize was not avoiding eye contact per se, but constantly scanning the environment for novel stimulation even as a newborn). He did not mind separating from ME (or any other human being), but threw the kind of hideous temper tantrums that have a mother balling her fists to stave off the urge to shake or smack the child and draw nasty comments from perfect strangers over separating from objects-- a particular stuffed animal, the woodstove in the living room, the rocks in the yard, and the bicycles on display at WalMart. He walked early (~11 months), and although he did coo and babble on schedule, he talked late (around 15 months for anything recognizable as a first word). He had a Duchenne (sincere or happy) smile from birth, but did not develop a social smile (a smile in response to a smile or a smile for the purpose of soliciting interaction). He still smiles for joy, and now displays an anxious/submissive "I am not a threat" smile, but still does not display a "proper social smile."

IDK about that....I mean early intervention should be focused on helping the child be healthy and content. Conditioning someone with potential autism to be more 'social' and make normal eye contact and basically appear normal on the outside I feel can cause a lot of internal stress for that person. I mean as much as I have struggled in my life having autism I am kind of glad I wasn't diagnosed as a baby or young child....since I think having to deal with strangers every day trying to tell me how to act and that all my natural ways of being are 'wrong' and pushing that I have to be 'normal' would have been damaging to.

I guess my point is if the OPs child is disabled enough he really needs outside help or any form of early intervention nothing wrong with that, but moderation is key and its best to ensure the focus at the end of the day is making the child content and and encouraging their personal development. The focus should never be to make the child 'normal' or remove autism in my opinion it should be about helping them where they struggle and allowing them to become the best autistic they can be.

You're very right, Sweetleaf. I was overly definitive in my response and didn't put all of the qualifiers on it that I should have. The only place I disagree is that I think you gain valuable info from eye contact, even if it's only fleeting, so my bias is to try to teach it if it's not too distressing for the child. But, that's more for their benefit than making them look normal. Completely agree with your final points on that matter.

10.5 month old today, would love to hear some more feedback from you guys.
Not much has changed really. He did start babbling though, but there is still non of that back-and-forth interaction.

It is the non-reciprocity that would concern me. My son scores very low in social skills, and during the babbling phase (which was well within typical time parameters) he would babble in the same fashion that he would later talk ---non recriprocally. My understanding is that NT babies will pause and wait for another person to respond to the babble. My son would just keep going and going and going. He would not wait for anyone else's participation; he just wanted to practice his babbling skills. I would try to interrupt him to teach reciprocity, but he would just babble over me more times than not.

What happens if you try to interrupt the babbling with your input?

I can interrupt him, but then he'll just stop to look at me like "what do you want?" and will not resume. Like you said it's as he's practicing his babbling but mostly to himself. We took him to see a pediatric neurologist and she said she doesn't think he's on the spectrum and that it's just his personality. She predicted he won't listen to us much growing up. But I find that hard to believe. There is so very little interaction between us, how could it be a personality thing? I thought babies are supposed to like interaction.
How's your son doing?

My son is 10 now, had a diagnosis at 4, but probably ought to have had one earlier. It is a combination of his presentation being confusing to people who ought to have known better and the fact that my husband and I were undiagnosed but spectrumy and a lot of what he did did not look so unusual to us. Actually, i thought a lot of it made sense and was smart.

Regular pediatricians are not necessarily as hip to the variations of autism as they ought to be, and while his fussiness was concerning to the ped as well as the lack of eye-contact, he did not think it was autism b/c his verbal milestones were within range and he was snuggly. The EI phone screener was not concerned b/c he was "smart" and I guess they were mainly concerned with regular, non-social cognitive delay. At that time we were relieved and let it drop.

He is doing OK now but we had to yank him out from school, b/c our district could not handle his behaviors and had stopped being willing to try. I home school him now, and his behaviors are very improved, but I am sure they would get worse again if he was in a regular school environment.

May I ask if he's communicating with you? My fear is that he'll never talk to me or love me.