hi there i have a 3 year old son, we are not sure if he  has mild austium , when he was baby he did speak, he said a few words then he started to this noise"eeeee" and moves his hand backwards and forwards, he has done that sine since he was a baby,  family member supected my son to be deaf all because his dad is deaf, so we had test loads of hearing test done and he passed all of them , then he kept doing the "eeeee" and he still does it to this day , we have been to a speech tharapist and we asked them does his have austium and she said from that i can see he doesnt, he can build, colour, draw..ect.., he is very indipendent with himself, only thing is delaying is his speech , but fmaily members are saying he has some form of austium, and we were saying no he doesnt and i said you said this about his hearing , as you can see me and my partner was getting fed up because there were saying this all the time , but like i said to speech tharapist even if he does have it i am not going to love him less or treat him any less, when he was a baby he use to pair shoes up all the time, if we moved them he put then together he doesnt do that now , he has a temper but doesnt hit anybody but he does try and hurt if self and throw himself on the floor and tamtrum , only yesterday he was doing that "eeeeeee" and we ask to watch his baby sister on floor because she was asleep , she only 3 months old and he didnt listen and he fell on top of her , she scream for an hour but she ok, but when my son did it he didnt show any emotion or remorse no nothing he only cryed when we told him off, he doesn point when he wants something , and we have this its take 2 to talk but to help us with his speech but i am more leaning to austium now , not because family member s said so its because what he did, he goes to nursery , didnt us o intereact with children but he does now , he does walk on his tip toes but we went to see a doctor about that and there said its just normal , but i have read so much about it and its a sign of austim , please can anyone help!!!

Hi

From reading what you say, there are elements ofautistic trait in your child, however these can also be rationalised by normal growing stages etc.

As a parent of an 11 year old who I suspect as being on the Autistic Spectrum and am still fighting the system, I suggest if you have concerns, you need to act now. Keep a diary, day to day for 2 weeks of happenings and see your gp, be forthcoming and insist on a referal.

You have to be prepared to fight the system, as a parent, you know your child, keep with your instincts, good luck

hi , thanks for your advice we are keeping a diary for what he is doing at home and at school, , he was very slow with everything , like rolling over and crawling ect....erm what else..we are trying toliet train him aswell, but that isnt working as we hope it would we try everything , he tryed potty training , he doesnt even know he done it, he doesnt come in to tell us he done a wee or nothing i dont want to force my son doing something that he aint willing to do but he as to come out of nappies its costing us a bloody fortune  , he fell on his 3 month old sister yesterday and he didnt show any emotions whatsoever, he never came up to her or nothing, he just laughted , he told him to watch out because she was sleep on her mat on the floor, we told him so many times he just didnt care at all the only time he cryed was when he told him off , when we tell him off he just looks like we are not there he just laughts or engnore us , we are waiting for appiontment for him to see the education women to give us a diagnostic so with what wrong , i keep telling them i want this sorting otherwise he going to get worst, i can see we are not the only ones , does anybody have any advice to help what we can do with potty training , he also he delay in speech , he loves reading and he always making sound, singing, making tunes and banging , he has found a beat that he like doing, its kinda cool i have never heard it before.

Hi

With regard to potty training, its best not to force the issue and make a big deal out of it otherwise it will become an issue with your child and then create even more problems. My son was late also but I had a small baby also at the time and it was difficult as he was crawling around and getting to the stage of walking. What I did was left a day when I had nowhere to go etc and basically let my child go without a nappy for the day, it was hard work as there were an awful lot of puddles but I persisted and in the end the penny dropped and he used the potty on his own acord.

From my experience, they need to discover things for themselves, it takes longer but is more productive in the long term. Your comments regarding empathy with others, ie showing no emotion etc is a classic trait of autistic children, my son has never been a 'loving' child and steers even now away from effection, unless he comes to you, then he feels its his decision and that seems to be ok..

The very best of luck with support, keep strong and remember, you know your child better than anyone.

yeah totley agree with you but my son is loving son he always want hugs and kisses , wen we play with each other i pretent to cry and he comes up to me and goes awwww and rubs my face but i say i am only joking and he laughts, ihave a 3 months old baby always he always helping with me and his sister , he wants to hold her, kiss her even put her dummy in her mouth , i love him so much ,and as for the toilet training we have given up because he isnt ready to do it yet, we wasnt forcing him to do anything , i would never never ever forces my kids to do something there dont want to do something, my son is very helpful around the house , when he spills something he cleans it up , my son will be ready when he ready thanks for the advice hunni

Hello, ASD is still difficult to pin down because it's such a mixed bag. They have specific boxes to tick, but obviously the problems vary a great deal from one child to another. For example our son (recently diagnosed ASD but we've known for a while!) gives quite good eye contact and is very friendly and sociable, very much enjoys affection and loves cuddles etc., so we ruled out autism as the cause of his unusual behaviour for a long time. It was only after finding out more that we realised that the social problems can take different forms and in our son it takes the form of random comments to people in an effort to make conversation, not understanding social rules  and what-have-you. He needs routines and in particular to know what's coming next and has some obsessive tendencies as well as the dreaded temper if his (sometimes impossible) needs aren't met. I would say that if your son has a speech and language problem and is develpoing typically in other ways he is unlikely to be diagnosed ASD, although it sounds as if there are other areas of concern for your son. They look for developmental problems and delays, rigid thinking and lack of imagination, social difficulties as well as communication problems. They have to tick all three of these boxes before autism is diagnosed. It sounds as if your son has enough pointers to check it out further, and you're his parent you know he's different yourself! Get the health visitor round and get the ball rolling. If your GP is unsympathetic, you may find the health visitors are a lot better, ours was great because one of her own children has special needs so  she war really supportive. Your son in any case should be getting speech and language therapy and diagnosis can come through that route as it did for us- they are assessing them during the sessions and the information they collect both from the groups and from what parents tell them is compiled. After 12 months or so of these groups and a lot of waiting (!) we say a consultant who after chatting with us announced that she had enough to make a diagnosis of ASD. Phew. Most important- get the ball rolling somehow- Health Visitors should still look at him at 3yo, otherwise ask for a second opinion at the doctors. Good luck.

hi zoe thanks for your comment , i agree with you , we had a meeting last thursday with the education psychologist and we told her that my son does have signs of austium and shes said that he also has  a delvelopment deley aswell but she said we wont learn toward the austim just yet because he might have these sign because of his development, but he he has a good imaganation, his eyes contact is good , he saying a few more words, we do have a speech and language that come to our house every wednesday morning to do activities with him , he can do all of them , so really my son is a year behind and he acting like a 2 year old instead of 3years old , i have just found out that my 4 brothers have learning differculty and i told education  lady that i dont want you to say , "right we have solved the problem he has learning difficulties " and she said we wont be doing that we will be doing everything by the book , and now for the last 3 days he been going to nursery my son as pushed a boy of a climbing frame and throwing stone and hitting poeple , my son wouldnt do that on perpose and he doesnt do it at home when he plays out, so yestursday i told nursery that we are pulling him out and said that you cant because he made really good progress and i said i rather have my safe and other kids safe, one of the staff said " we can try a behavior chart " and i said what the piont he doesnt understand the concept of it , he doesnt understand anything, and i said what else can we do now apart from taken him out , i said he cant help it and i couldnt tell him off because he wouldnt understand why he getting told off, the teacher told him 1st time no need to do it the second time , he will get there in the end and its very stressful when when we have 10 year old boy and 4 month old baby, so hopeful we will get the help we need .

I'm so sorry to hear things are so frustrating for you, believe me I know how you feel! We are lucky in that Alfie's nursery have been fantastic with him and he has had wonderful staff to work with him at the 'special groups', and he has now been diagnosed. Along the way thoughy we did experience a LOT of vagueness and sometimes a frustrating reluctance to accept that diagnosis would be the best thing with suggestions that he will get the help he needs either way (not true, a diagnosis still opens doors), they don't like to say what they think in case someone takes issue with it later on, to the point where we didn't evenknow he was about to be diagnosed until the moment the consultant announced it! Now of course it is a huge relief to have that side of things out of the way, but of course every new day brings a new challenge.

I would say that if you feel that your little boy would benefit from being offered the kind of support offered to kids with ASD, tell them so at nursery- this kind of help (visual timelines, simplified speech etc) is not exclusively for diagnosed kids and if you feel your son would benefit you can say so. When I signed Alfie up for nursery I had a chat with the teachers explaining that alfie is a bit 'different' and we  think he may have autism but had not been diagnosed yet- for one thing I wanted him to get the support he needed and another thing I didn't want them setting him off or branding him as 'naughty' when he didn't understand what he was being asked to do. They were really good about things and put a visual timeline up for him and gave him the extra support he needed to settle in. He's done very well there and I put a lot of it down to the extra support he's received, and as a result he needs the timelines and things a lot less now because he's got used to the structure there. So if you feel that there are specific things which would help then it's worth mentioning it to them, they may very well wecome any tips! 

 As far as the health staff go, have they said whether he is being assessed for signs of any underlying condition? Is his therapy an ongoing process or is it an isolated thing on its own?  We were very confused about this because we wondered what was happening the whole time, he went for speech therapy for either 6 or 8 weeks, I forget which, then there was a break, then he attended Feelgood Fridays which is a small group of kids with special needs apparently for learning and assessment, but they were assessing him the whole time, and the staff have been visiting him in school. He's been on Early Years Action Plus at school and they liase with the medical staff as well. It's all very complicated, but it all culminated in a consultant appointment where they suddenly announced that between everything they had seen and what we had told them they had enough information to diagnose ASD. My friend's little boy had a completely different experience. Donna couldn't see anything wrong, she thought she just had a 'naughty kid', and it was the nursery teacher who noticed the tendencies. They somehow got the ball rolling and had an assessment which involved taking Daniel to be assessed every day for two weeks at a special two-way-glass type facility. After two weeks she received the news that he has autism. So  there you go, she only lives down the road but comes under a different county so the process is different for them.

 Sorry it is a bit long, but I just wanted to give you an idea how the process went for us and how it may differ in other areas so you can push for a bit more info yourselves. They will try to sidestep any issue related to the process of diagnosis if my experience is anything to go by, but try to seem really relaxed about it, yet do keep quizzing. If you let them know that you are ok with the 'verdict' whatever they say in the end, you'd just like to know more about the process and time scale involved. See how that goes! 

 You do have my heartfelt support, it's so hard to get though this time, my friend says getting 'statemented' is worse- eek!!  something to look foreward to eh?

Sorry! Just wanted to add that if your son is on the spectrum, his behaviour is probably the result of his anxiety reaching unmanageable levels, in any case the staff should be able to keep an eye on things to see what it is that's setting him off. If it's something obvious they can set about avoiding it, if it's not obvious it could be sensory overload like lots of little things that didnt' go as expected and resulted in him lashing out when the final straw landed on him. I have to say the staff sound a bit half-soaked, we were lucky as Alfie was not the first autistic boy they've ever had there, your son might be the only one they've ever had there.

hi there zoe thanks for you comment, yes that was a long one lol , yeah i can see where you are coming , we had another meeting yesterday over my sons behavour , the manager of his nursery said that he didnt do it on purpose, i think we just was in shock because my son has never done this bofore, so we have changed his hours to the morning now because there are less children so the staff can give my son attention more, there are getting help for my son profession help, we are waiting for anpointment too see another doctor , and we had another meeting with speech tharapist and she going to ring around to get us more help for my son , but hopeful we get the help we want

I too have a 3 yr old son who we suspect to have either some form of learning difficulties or possibly a form of autism. We aren't sure what to expect of either outcome, we know two other parents who have autistic children, 1 is mild and quiet & can speak a small amount & the other is agressive, very 'constant' (not sure how else to describe) and can't speak at all. Our son has similarities to both these children who too are boys, but is not exactly alike them, does that mean he isnt autistic? He can speak....just. He can say a small 3-4 worded sentence? He can sometimes keep eye contact, he doesnt make any significant noises but does do a rocking back an forth thing occassionally. He does have certain rituals he must do if they are broken or changed in anyway he gets very upset. He is quite aggressive at times but seems to save most of his aggression for home and focuses on myself or his dad but more so to his twin. Is this a 'trait' of autism?

We have started the ball rolling to look for answers but it seems to be a long haul process (as most of you already know). We have had the SOG's assessment done by our health visitor and it confirmed he was roughly 9-12mths behind his age group, is this significant? We thought having autism meant you would be much futher behind? Can this also be wrong? We know from him attending nursery school he isnt performing as well as his peers and that he is unable to form social bonds. He does seem to be mostly a happy little boy, he does however not like people to kiss his mouth unless he kisses you, and even then he will mostly kiss your cheek or not at all!!!

Does anyone else have an autistic child who isnt to the extreme that similarises with my son? Also is there anyone who believes there child to be 'different' but family members, generally the older generation such as grandparents or great grandparents dismiss your fears and say theres nothing wrong??

Hi My daughter has a mild form or williams syndrome that fits in with some of the descriptions outlined in the first few posts, this could be a possible avenue to investigate?

hey ,lucy there are diffrent types of autism , its best for you to see health vistor , this is all very new to me , i had to change my sons nursery because there were treating him diffrently and there are not suppose to , there supose to treat all children, adults .eldely ,all the same , he is in a better nursery,got his suport teacher which her son does have autism. my son has speach and languages and development delay, he has come along great , he started to piont, try and say words, he is in a routin all the time , he got new friends , he even in a chirstmas play, first time ever lo, so proud of him, he doesnt speak at all only a few words like yeah, hi , he loves his brother who is 11 and his sister who 11 months old now , there bond is beautiful between them, but we have a slight problem but we know its the best idea we have come up with, we have a private landlord and she said no pets when we moved in, but when we moved in last years we never knew there was a something wrong with our son, we want to get him a puppy to help him talk , i know its not going to work straight a way but me and husband feel its the best thing for him , he love animals , because if he want to talk to a pet he has to call his name so i think it would help, i told the land lord that its for our son who has a disabilty , and not for us , i went round and she said we would ring back which she never did , so we have been waiting for a 1 whole week  but nothing , so me and my husband said that i dont think she believe us that our son has a disabiltiy she think we are making it up, we have everything ,we have proof ,we have reports but i know sciencetifllicy that dogs can help kids talk and have a really good bond, all we want is for our child to talk , and we know whats best for him , so really all we need is to try and find a the right people who can put it in writing to tell her that dogs can help children with disabilys to talk, we had pets when we was younger because of my 2 older brother , is there anybody who can help me to contact them to ask them for proof so we can get a puppy for our son..thanks

hiya again lucy, my son grandparents says my son has autism but he doesnt , there kepts saying he was deaf, because his father was born deaf , its was furstrating for us beauase we didnt believe it , there did this to our other son but end of the day you know something is wrong, grandparent are there for help , but can be fustrating because we was told he doesnt have  autism , he had speech and language development deley, but there are lots of types of autism, my son doesnt talk , doesnt understand  us , we cant even hear him say i love you mummy or dady, very upsetting because i know he does love me and i love him loads, but i am very protecting over him, never ever let him out of my site, he my baby and he very brave ,i know there are children with highter autism or any other disabiltiy , but this is the first time i have ever come across to this , shocking, upsetting , but we have pulled throught together and we are all happy, all we can do it help him though this and one day i will hear him say i love you mummy or daddy, get yourself to gp and ask , if you think your son has autism try and to go a childern center or look it up on NHS there help you out