| Late walking + ASD = Low functionning / ID ?
Hi
I’m new to this board and a French speaker so sorry in advance for my weird English.
I’m a first time mum to a 17 months old girl.
I’m really concerned about her because:
- she is still not walking (cruises and walks while pushing furniture)
- she doesn’t talk neither (says mama and dada a lot, yes, no and night-night but not meaningfully).
- she waves and claps but doesn’t point
- she responds to her name and follows a point ½ of the time
- she’s very social, interacts a lot and has good eye contact
- she shows, bring toys, gives a lot plays peekaboo…
- she sleeps and eats well and all in all is a very calm and easy going child.
- She imitates day to day activities, plays functionally with toys and tools
- She will pretend to feed a doll or put a toy phone to her ear (or mine) and babble
- she has a poor receptive language (only gets very simple commands: give me, come, sit…)
- she has no stimming, repetitive behavior or tantrums
Because of this mixed bag, I’m not sure if she is on the spectrum and/or has developmental delays. Anyway, we are on a waiting list to get her assessed by professionals. In the meantime, we want to be proactive and are getting her into ST, PT and OT.
My main concern here is the late walking. I came across a study evaluating the link between late walking and ASD. For that, they compared 3 groups of children: ASD, NT and GDD. Their conclusion is that 95% of NT children walked by 17 months, 68% of ASD children and 32% of GDD.
Among the children who walked after 17 months, the majority of them (with either ASD or GDD) had an intellectual disability.
So their conclusion is that late walking for children with either ASD or GDD is an early sign of intellectual disability.
Since reading this, I’m a mess.
I was slowly coming to terms with my DD being on the spectrum but still praying for her to be on the mild end. Now this study has me envisioning the possibility of her being severely impaired and I just can’t handle it.
I guess I’m asking for any feedback about late walkers and their progress.
| 
