Possible Autism Signs in the Young Infant
May 4, 2009 by Dr. Heather
Filed under Autism, Babies, Sensory Integration
I’ve written before about the confusion and difficulty around the diagnosis of Autism in young children (before the age of 3).
My regular readers know that I’m a strong proponent of Early Intervention screening, and also of early intervention therapy services. This means having your local Child Development center see your child BEFORE the age of three, should you have any concerns about her development, social interaction, or communication skills.
But you also know that I am loathe to jump on the autism-hysteria bandwagon. I worry that there are many other problems that are being missed because we’re jumping to the Autism diagnosis too quickly. Issues of sensory, cognitive, medical, environmental, or even genetic problems can be missed when a diagnosis is made too quickly. Also, the range of child development is so wide, that what can SEEM abnormal may not be. And I blame my field; many of us are so concerned about the number of developmentally delayed children out there, and so few of us are adequately trained to truly evaluate for Autism in the early years, that too may children are mistakenly diagnosed as Autistic. And then their REAL problems go undetected — and untreated.
If I had a million bucks (or ten) I’d start a training foundation centered on the intensive training of Early Intervention clinicians in the detection and treatment of Autism-related conditions — and other problems that might SEEM like Autism, but are NOT. We need a nation-wide (heck, world-wide) training initiative so that psychologists, pediatricians, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, special instruction teachers — indeed the whole range of Early Intervention professionals — can get the advanced training we all need in this very specialized area.
In the meantime, you can read this very interesting article at Time.com summarizing some of the newest research on signs of Autism in the very young infant. It also helps to explain why this is truly a very difficult disorder to diagnose in the early years. And if you missed it, there’s also a link to a popular post of mine on the diagnosis of Autism.
Click here for the Time.com article, and
click here for my own article on Autism.
Aloha,
Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink
Two anecdotes to add. When the subject of the MMR shot came up for discussion in my mommy group, one woman, an occupational therapist, said that she had done her pediatric training with autistic babies (or babies suspected to have autism) and she felt there were some very observable differences from non-autistic babies. She said it to say that none of the kids in the group seem to have autism.
There was a pretty good documentary on PBS on a family with a grown-up son with Asperger’s, not super high functioning — I was flipping channels so I did not get the title. In an interview with the mother, she mentions that she thought something was off with him early in infancy… I think she said something about his strange behavior nursing.
Thank you for this. My 20-month-old son was recently diagnosed with apraxia of speech and sensory processing disorder. Two out of three evaluators felt he didn’t have signs of autism, but one evaluator recommended further assessment. What we’ve decided to do is to have my son go through speech and occupational therapy for a few months, then have him reassessed.
There are people we know who are urging us to push for an autism eval, but I don’t see the point of doing that if he doesn’t need those services. My son’s speech therapist has a son on the spectrum and she feels pretty strongly that my son does not need ABA or floortime and that he’s getting appropriate treatment, so I feel confident that we’re doing the right thing for the time being.
Apraxia and SPD do occur at high rates in autistic children, but they also occur in non-AS kids and it’s disconcerting to see that diagnosis being pushed in situations where it’s not appropriate.
I keep trying to tell people this, but they just get mad at me! To make matters worse my daughter is developmentally delayed. I’ve lost friends before because they are convinced she is autistic and that I’m just being stubborn. My hubby and I had to move eventually because by the time she turned 3, our sources to help her were almost gone. The state didn’t offer help past age 3.