Early Detection?

Post Reply New Topic

I know the rule of thumb with diagnosis is "three years old", but I know a lot of kids who were diagnosed as autistic / Aspergers at around a year or two old. I'm not entirely sure what behaviors they were looking for except a few. Being on the spectrum myself, and knowing that it could be hereditary, my fifteen month old daughter has had some odd characteristics that remind me of spectrum children, so I suppose I just wanted to share my thoughts:

1.) She tries to be sociable, even with other babies, but has absolutely no concept of sharing or behaving and will take toys from them and go play alone. This may not be unusual, but it is in combination with other things I've noticed.

2.) She has tantrums if anyone but her parents and a few trusted people (some who had to work diligently for months) pick her up. I mean bloody, screaming, wiggling tantrums as if she's in pain.

3.) She seems to have sensory overload. Any sudden, loud noises frighten her, leading her to scream and cover her ears and begin to sob uncontrollably. These are noises that, while a little jarring, are nothing that should frighten her that badly.

4.) She isn't really interested in toys. The piles of toys we get her usually go untouched, she prefers to play with real life objects including empty tin containers, cans, bottles, plastic cups, clothing, blankets, books, nicknacks, dog leashes, postcards, silverware, pants, and spatulas (among some of the things I've caught her playing with).

5.) She is exceptionally intelligent for her age. She understands when I speak to her and ask her questions and seems to understand language beyond any of her "playmates" (that she doesn't play with) her age. She uses her intelligence to get what she wants out of them, including snacks and toys. Not in a malicious way, but in a way that's evident she doesn't have any concept of other kids' feelings (in contrast, the other kids who play together seem to share fine and stay in the group to share toys). She knows how to open doors, turn on the TV, change the channel, etc. She puts herself to bed at night when she's tired with no help from me, she just crawls into bed, covers herself up, and goes to sleep when it's time for her to be tired.

6.) When she throws tantrums, she bangs her head off of the floor, hard and repeatedly.

7.) She has some manic habits such as brushing her palms against each other really quickly.

8.) Sometimes her facial expressions are inappropriate for the situation. Sometimes when people are laughing, she just stares, or even cries. Whereas when other people are serious, she may break out in laughter with no stimulation.

9.) She can literally play all day alone and only come to me when she's hungry for food, then go play by herself in the house again. If she isn't playing alone, she'll go for the company of the dogs before coming to us or anyone else.

10.) She gets extremely frightened and intimidated when any group of people, large or small, gathers in a space she's in.

11.) At 15 months, she still hasn't spoken. She makes sounds and babbles (to herself; she'll wander around the house as if she's having a conversation with herself). As smart as she is, and as far ahead in cognitive and physical development as she is, she still hasn't said a word.


I'm wondering if you guys saw these patterns in your children that ended up being diagnosed, when they were this young. I'm sure that's not everything she does that may be indicative of it, but that's all that's on the top of my head right now.

I'm sure she can hear fine, because she can shake her head when I ask her to do something and she doesn't want to. It's almost like she either physically can't or doesn't want to talk. But thank you. I think this is something that is better caught as early as possible, because I lived my entire high school career without knowing and I would be three or four years into college by now, had graduated HS early, if anyone had known what was going on with me.

My daughter was not sociable with other children-she seemed quite afraid of other children even as a small child. She seemed more trusting of adults-almost as if she felt safe with them and their predictability as opposed to a child's chaotic nature.

One thing that has played prominent with my daughter that doesn't seem to be in your description is anxiety. I don't know if all ASD kids have it but my daughter has been plagued with it in a very extreme way all her life. Things that seemed easy for other kids her age have always been more difficult for her. Everything except academics-she seems quite content with contemplating numbers or drawing patterns. Her fascination with patterns has always played a very prominent role and when patterns were fixated on-everything else in her world was forgotten.

My daughter spoke her first words at about 2 and a half. Until then she grunted. She did seem to have shared joy and that is why her diagnosis took so long-she would jointly engage in patty cake or listen to a book being read. She didn't go off into her own world until around age 4-5 and that is when the tantrums and sensory difficulties became quite prominent.

I don't know if there's anything you can do at 15 months to intervene-just give her lots of love and confidence building. Above all else, do not force her into what she is uncomfortable with. For too long I tried and tried in vain to get her to be more socially adept and all it did was make her more anxious.

Love her for who she is and try not to see all things as possible signs. Sounds like you have a very bright girl on your hands and that is a good reason to be thankful. I am sure parenting must be hard for you since you have struggles yourself. Take care of yourself and enjoy the younger years.

My daughter was not diagnosed with AS till just recently at 10 years of age, i knew something was not quite right, but the school would not listen, they just kept putting her up every year, their answer was it was imaturity In the end i went to the social worker and begged her to listen to me and they finaly did something about it, When she was a toddler she seemed to be ok, except she was very in your face and did not or would not share with her brothers, she was talking in sentences at the age of around 18 months, starting school was ok we had no problems, she had a group of friends and all seemed well, as she got older i realy started to notice things, she was always having fall outs with her friends, she was making a new best friend every day, she would meet someone for the first time and totaly trust them and they were then her new best friend, her schooling is shocking, ( i feel so sad for her) she will now only wear 1 outfit, sometimes we have to explain something to her a number of times b4 she gets it, on first diagnosis they said that she had short term memory problems, but then i brought up all the things that she does that i find odd, like the clothing and friends and a whole number of other things. i guess what im trying to say is sometimes its so hard to pick up on, if i were you i would keep a diary (something i wish i had have done) and write everything down, you could probably try and get a diagnosis now but with all the research i have been doing i have found that many kids are not diagnosed untill school years, and apparantly its even harder to diagnose girls because they tend to copy people to get by and this is what my daughter has been doing. I have the total belief that mothers know best! and you know if there is something wrong or not. Dont give up like i did out of frustration, no one knows your child like you do, go with it. Good luck!

I didn't know that was an issue. I've never been able to sit down and read to her. I can't sit her still at all most times unless she's tired. She's off, alone, doing what she wants to do. She has no interest in listening to stories at all. Like I get newsletters about how I'm supposed to be reading to her every day and how she should probably know at least one word by now, but she doesn't, and I can't read to her because she'll just look away to try and be distracted by something else.

Does she respond to music at all? Do you sing to her?

I sing to her. I play music. When she hears music or sound she goes into a fit of repetitive movements. Someone might identify it as dancing. . .? But that's not the feeling I get. I just feel like the music triggers the movements. She shakes her head back and forth for like two minutes straight, or goes up on her toes and then down, up, and down, up and down for a similar amount of time. Most kids I know her age dance. They'll shake their little bodies and get into the music, but she just does these movements. She also has absolutely no concept of how to play games. She understands to give a high five when I put my hand up now, but that took me like five months to get through to her. She absolutely does not understand patty-cake at all or any other interactive games the doctor keeps advising me to play with her for distraction purposes. It's like she doesn't get the point of a game, she'd rather chase after the dogs.

Hi Underink-

My son was diagnosed at 2.5 with PDD_NOS/possible Asperger's, and we knew something was up well before then. Every case of autism is different, so sometimes it can be very difficult to detect especially at such a young age.
Many of the things you describe could be normal for her age, but some of the things you mention could be indicators. The things that stood out to me:

Doesn't seem interested in toys-----my son never was except for a few toys here and there. He is 5 now, and still would rather get into stuff around the house than play with toys.

Banging her head on the floor----my son never did this, but this is can be a sign of autism.

No shared attention----this is a big one. My son did allow me to read stories to him, but my son suffered from hypotonia (low muscle tone) so he was a late crawler and walker, so it took him a while to start getting around. I had started taking him to physical therapy at 1 yr. old, and when he was about 15-18 mos old is when we started noticing that he was not pointing or showing us things.

Rubbing palms together and shaking head back and forth----My son started shaking his head back and forth (like he was saying no) at 4 mos. old. He started flapping his hands at 1 yr. old. He mainly did the head shaking thing when he heard music and he never really knew ,and still doesn't ,at 5 how to dance. Now when music is playing sometimes, I will say dance, and he will start shaking his head back and forth.

No words at 15 mos------that would concern me. Although my son had words at 10 mos. old, over time, we noticed that he was not really using them to communicate with us. He was just repeating what he had heard.

Now, with all of that being said, try to remain calm. I too think 15 mos is too young to give a diagnosis. That is why I waited it out until he was 2.5. I do not think there is any need to get a label put on your daughter at this point, but I am a STRONG believer in early intervention. I truly believe that my son is doing as well as he is today because of early intervention.

I don't know what area you are living in, but if you are in the US, most states have early intervention programs that are run by the state, and will come out to your home to do an evaluation. If your daughter has signigicant delays in key areas, then she may qualify for services. I think she probably would qualify for speech therapy since she has no words at 15 mos. Also, if there is an Easter Seals program near you, they can also do an evaluation. Or you could take her to a private Occupational Therapist to do an evaluation.

I would also advise you to read books by Dr. Stanley Greenspan who developed the Floortime Method of early intervention. Some of his books can be very wordy, but he has wonderful ideas on working with your child to get her engaged with you. You can probably pull up information on the Floortime method off the internet.

Try not to panic, but I do think your daughter could use some early intervention. This will probably include speech and occupational therapy. If it turns out that she does not have autism, then these therapies are not going to hurt her at all. They will only help her to be more engaged with you and the world.

I hope some of this helps. I can understand what you are going through. The good thing that you have going for you is that your daughter does seem very intelligent, and she seems to have a lot of initiative and insight. And if you think that she is really understanding what you are saying to her, that is HUGE. My son didn't seem to have these things going for him, so I think your daughter will be okay!

Good luck!

I agree with angelbear, it seems appropriate to look into Early Intervention. And Floortime could be a really good thing to try. I think the basic principle of floortime is learning how to enter your child's world to engage them, rather than trying to get them to enter yours.

Well I'm sure she doesn't have low functioning autism, if she has it. I have Aspergers myself, and I'm positive it runs in my family. My fiance may or may not have it; he shows a lot of signs of Aspergers such as not being able to let go of something and becoming obsessive over it, both topics of discussions and subjects of interest, obsessive narrow range of interests, almost phobic of people, (and a lot of others).

The only thing that really concerns me is the speech delay, because I know typically with Aspergers there is no speech delay. She's said things that *sound* like words, but she won't use them for anything specific to communicate. Like she says 'mama' and 'dada', but she has no concept that either word refers to her parents, let alone which one is which. She puts together the word "agi" (which at first I thought was the word 'doggy'), but she would run around the house saying it and not be indicating dogs whatsoever. She can point to things she wants. She's smart and interacts with me in ways *far* advanced for her age (almost everyone that observes her in person thinks she's over two years old), until it comes to the talking and interacting. She seems to have no concept of that. She'll repeatedly give people an object and get annoyed if they let it go, and that's sort of the only sort of 'playing' I've ever seen her do with any adult. Like I said, she absolutely has no focus to watch cartoons or have a storytime.

All that being said, she behaves similarly to me when I was a baby, so says my mother. My mother said I didn't bother speaking until I was after two, and never talked frequently. I would sometimes babble to myself, but I would never try to interact with people. My mother regarded me as an 'extremely well behaved child', except that when I became more cognitive after three years old, I expressed a superior knowledge to any of my step-siblings of age and, at as young as seven, could argue the Biblical passages and passages from Plato's Dialogues with my father (of course, he had to read these to me in more simple terms, but I understood the arguments) who was a philosopher. And I never ended up making any friends. Come senior year in high school, I could write fifteen page reports in a single night from memory with no resources if I chose the right subjects (namely authors like Dostoevsky). But I always knew that there was a tradeoff between my intellect and my ability to socialize--- namely, that I had absolutely *no* such ability. People tolerated me at best socially.

The reason I'm not in general *worried* is because it would have made all the difference in my life if I had known about Aspergers when I was young. I wouldn't have been constantly wondering what was wrong with me and may have succeeded in areas I failed in because of it. Conversely, she will know young if she has it and not have the problem of wondering. The speech worries me because of its peculiarity and she doesn't seem delayed in any other areas but speech and social interaction. But I'm not aware of many cases where Aspergers involves speech delays. In my newsletters, it usually indicates children typically speak about ten words at her age, at least, yet she shows no indication of being able to use any to communicate. She didn't start coming to her name until recently. I mean very recently. It used to be more often than not she would act as if I hadn't said anything at all. It was quite worrisome. She does come to her name now, so I'm relieved.

Thanks for the help though. A little over two seems like a good time to get her diagnosed if she has it. My newsletter I get weekly per age says signs of autism appear as soon as they become toddlers, but I think Aspergers is a little harder to detect because it isn't as blatantly obvious, especially in little girls.

That's good that your mom is sharing how you were when you were a child. That could be it. If you didn't talk until 2 yrs of age, then maybe this is why. I have also heard of kids on the spectrum not speaking at all until they were 3 or 4, and then began speaking in full sentences.

I did have one friend who was concerned that her 2nd child did not seem to have many words around 15 mos too, and she was having difficulty eating solid foods. My friend took her to speech therapy to get help with the eating issues. They found that her tongue was not moving properly in her mouth, so they started working on that, and she is coming right along with eating and speech. So, if you continue to be concerned about the speech, it couldn't hurt to try some speech therapy.

The thing about Asperger's and the no speech delay does sort of confuse me at times. My son is somewhere between Asperger's and PDD, and while he had no delay in acquiring words, he definitely had very strange speech patterns which over time are getting better.

Well, I don't want to try and make you more worried then you are, but I'm concerned from what you write that she isn't getting enough interaction with people, especially you. Even with an autistic child, perhaps especially with an autistic child, the early interaction is important. You want to respect their needs and boundaries, but not at the cost of them missing out on the bonding and learning they get from their parents.

You might want to read the memoirs of Temple Grandin's mother for some insights. Also you might want to read about a program called RDI. Not saying you would necessarily want to do it but it has some useful insights about the nature of relationships between autistic kids and their parents.

UnderINK, I've read in several places that "no speech delay" in the context of Aspergers is taken to mean used 1 - 3 words at age 2 years. In comparison with typical development, that's a big delay, but I guess they are thinking in comparison with classic autism.

What's her babbling like? From your description, it does sound like she has got the idea of language, she understands a lot of what you say, and that she does use her mouth. How many different sounds can she say? When she babbles does she use intonation like normal speech, so that it sounds like she is talking a foreign language? When you're anxious about speech delay it's useful to think through what she can do - speech is like a big jigsaw puzzle, so if you find that she's got a lot of the pieces in place it can be reassuring.

Try saying back to her whatever she says - don't know if you have had that tip before. And if she isn't keen on interacting, try following her around and commenting on what she is doing or what she seems to be interested in. If she's intensely focussed on something, that's the time when she will learn the words fastest. She might not say them back to you, but don't let that stop you from making sure she hears the words.

hope this helps and isn't a duplicate of what you've already been told.

I don't want to dismiss your concerns (because a parent knows their child best), but a lot of what you write is developmentally normal.

Sharing....oh my, that takes a long time for kids and mostly has to be specifically taught.

Facial expressions matching the situation... Babies are often in their own world and will laugh when people are crying and shout when everyone is whispering.

Not playing with purchased toys - I don't know a parent who doesn't complain about spending thousands on toys only to find their child playing with a box for hours.

Lots of kids have seperation / stranger anxiety at around, I think like 17 months - if she's as smart as you say, then it wouldn't surprise me that she would only want the preferred few.

Head banging, long periods of alone time would be my concerns - the rest by themselves, wouldn't have me worried. Having no words (that you can understand) when other kids may have 10, wouldn't really bother me.