| Re: Could my son be autistic?
I am not a professional so I can't say for sure if he is or isn't Autistic; what I can offer is that sounds a lot like my son, though he also had sensory issues as well. I had him eating baby foods and some table foods (mashed potatoes, applesauce) things of this nature and literally over night he regressed back to formula and back to the bottle. This is a baby who ate like a horse from the time he was born totally surprising the doctors at the quantity he ate. Bottles were always having baby cereal in them almost form the beginning, to at 10 months completely stopped eating any baby foods, table foods and using his sippy cup. I ended back with formula plain formula bottles for the next 2 years. Finally graduating to pudding cups, and yogurt completely blended for the next three years and milk like it was going out of style. Any thing he, he couldn't tolerate, and I was working with a nutritionalist during this time. Eye contact wasn't happening, often wouldn't respond if his name was called. 1st tooth at about 18 months, delayed with crawling and walking. Tons, and tons of ear infections and tonsilitis to the point they kept thinking of doing tubes, but by the time we were able to stay off of antibiotics it was end of ear season. My son is mild to moderate autistic and now leaning towards Aspengers. He started school at age 3 in a PPI program (pre primary impaired) took me until 1 week before starting school to get him potty trained, but at this point was too late so he stayed an additonal year in PPI as they couldn't let him in kindergarden unless he was potty trained. He flaps his arms, would sit and stare at a plain wall, play with cars kindof backwards (paying attention to the wheels going around) instead of pushing a car on the floor and it going normally. Would sit for hours playing with something incidental like a piece of bird seed, or a leaf that he would carry for literally hours. He never put other things in his mouth like some other toddlers at that age. We started with Early On at 2 1/2 yrs old waiting to see why he is behind his peers and this is how we ended up in PPI. So I can relate and see a lot of your son, within my own based on what you said.
Just for the record an Autism dx. isn't the end of the world and doesn't always mean instituationalize when the are older. Early intervention seriously does work, and does help. I have seen a lot of changes within my son and at this point at 9 1/2 he is standing on a good chance of living "a normal" life with some supervision. He is in an AI classroom at school and is mainstreamed in science, lunch, gym and recess with his peers. He is obessed with the weather and natural disasters and actually predicts the weather better than the weather man on the news. He has been doing this since he was 2 1/2, 3 yrs old. He still flaps his arms and we are working on it, a lot of the typical characteristics of Autism isn't that prevalent with him anymore, but if you work with him long enough you can definately tell that he is Autistic. My main problem or characteristic that he has is the inability to adapt or understand social skills. THis is where and what we spend a lot of time working with. He also has ADHD but not medicated as of yet, and showing signs of OCD. When he was a toddler he would have temper tantrums that were unreal and very hard to deal with as he would literally throw himself into walls or the floor and repeatedly hit his head (quite hard) The best we could do, is try to save himself from hurting himself, but if we drew attention to the behavior the more and harder he would do it. Thankfully that has stopped for the most part. Happens very rarily if even 1x a year. He loves to watch TV, and play video games. He oftens just goes into the other room to do this, (in some ways he is like a loner) in the effect he prefers to be alone. He also doesn't talk about daily activities or engage in a conversation in regards to what he did today at school. However, he will talk your ear off if the topic is about science, weather or natural disasters and often interupts with this.
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