When did they start to show symptoms? - Autism Spectrum Message Board

2cutekids · 02-13-2005, 06:43 PM

My and dh were just watching some home video's of my son. Well, for the first 2 1/2 years, he was "normal". NO spaciness, no fits, no toe walking, no looking at his shadow or reflection... He UNDERSTOOD AND ANSWERED ALL YOU QUESTIONS. He also threw and kicked a ball well. Then at 2 1/2, just months before my dd was born, you can see the change.

His walk changed. It became little steps, toeing. He seemed less graceful. At Halloween my dh was putting on his costume and he was fussying, didn't want the hat on or the little hand things (he was a bear). Started to get a little bit of a blank stare

*that was as far was we got, but you can see the change taking place. It gets worse from there, I know it. I remember it, add another year onto this and WOW, it is when it hit full blown 3 1/2 yr--4. That was the worst time for all of us~

Soooooo.... just wondering when your kids started to show signs?

(he is dx HFA/AS, it is more like AS tho)

BetsyAnn · 02-14-2005, 12:24 AM

My son showed signs from birth. He was very passive. He never smiled. He never made eye contact. Our other children had been so high maintainance that we really enjoyed how passive he was. We did not realize there was any problem until he was obviously speech delayed between 1 year and 18 months.

off kilter · 02-14-2005, 04:37 AM

I suppected Autism for my son when he was only 6 to 8 weeks old. He refused to breast feed and when I gave him breast milk in a bottle he leaned away from me. Paul was born in Jan. and That Easter we were at a family dinner and we put Paul and his cousin only a week older on the Bed together to take pictures of them. A Family member was doing all those stupid faces and noises you make to get a childs attention and to get them to smile. Pauls cousin was bursting with his reaction he was smiling arms and legs waving franticaly with joy at the attention. Paul was staring passively off to the side. No one said a thing to me but later I learned that is when family members started talking to each other about what was wrong with Little Paul, They didn't feel comfortable talking to me but rumors were flying. Most family members feared he was deaf. I talk to my Dr. about Autism after that, it was the first time I dared say the word outloud. By 4 months Paul worshiped the ceiling fan. refused to wave arms and legs in excitement when greeted by people. His face had only one look- kind of calm and peaceful all the time with people but he would laugh hysterically when he saw light patterns on the wall. He did not reach for us or give us those long looks babies have when they coo back. when he snuggled as an infant he wanted to lay with his back towards me. We continued the don't ask don't tell game till Paul was 1 and a family member after watching Paul sit and spin a top for hours, completelly ignoring the family members gathered for X-mas asked me if I didn't think I should get his hearing tested. That was when we told Family what was going on.But in answer to your question Paul had Autistc symptoms from birth. He never had skills and lost them. His progress has been steady but slow. His symptoms did seem to peak around age 2 and then have steadly progressed in a positive way since then.

NineLives · 02-14-2005, 05:17 AM

My son was about 15 months when we started noticing something was different about him. He was our third child. He had started saying some words and then suddenly it just stopped. For about the next 4 to 5 years it was mostly babble that nobody could understand. During that time it also sounded like he had come up with some form of his own language. One word of his language I distinctly remember was bishabop. We figured out that was his word for a fat person. From about 5 to 8 we could understand him, but we had to translate to just about everyone else. From that point things began to look up somewhat. It was slow progress but now at age 18 he can have a conversation with anyone. It's sort of slow and he doesn't usually make full eye contact but it's meaningful. He still has delayed expressive and receptive language skills, but all in all he does very well. He has his drivers license and is expecting to attend vocational school next Fall. We feel extremely fortunate that things have gone like they have. Early on we had a pretty grim outlook on his future.

Al & Matt's Mom · 02-14-2005, 05:44 AM

My son developed normally up until about 20 months. At that time he went from about 75 words and emerging sentences to 10 words. He stopped saying Mommy or Daddy. He had trouble following directions. The decline lasted about 6 months. The only indication before then was that he had pica. But, so did our neighbor's NT child so we didn't worry about it.