My Inner Action

The idea that your child could have a serious developmental delay can be very frightening for parents. A consultation with a professional is always the best way to get to the bottom of your concerns. In the meantime, however, it is normal to want to do your own research and try to find some clues to get pointed in the right direction. The following is a list of signs your child may have autism. Remember, however, that any child may do one or more of these on occasion. The key here is whether a child has several of these traits, and if they are serious enough to interfere with normal functioning.

The first sign is a delay in normal speech.  A child with autism may not speak at all, or speech is not appropriate for age level. What may differentiate autism from other speech delays, however, is the quality of the child’s communication, rather than the actual words or sentences produced. Does your child actually seem to desire communication with you? Or does he mostly repeat things he has heard or stock phrases he has memorized? Many parents think if their child is speaking, they cannot have autism, but if speech is limited to repeating memorized phrases this is a red flag for autism.

Eye contact may be non-existent or unusual. A child with autism may look at you out of the corner of his eyes, gaze right through you, or not look at you at all. On the other hand, some children with autism do make eye contact with people who are familiar and comfortable, such as parents, but not with new people. It may be helpful to observe how your child interacts with those outside the immediate family.

Lack of joint attention is another red flag for autism. “Joint attention” is a phrase used to describe the looking behaviors in communication. Think of how you might communicate to a friend, “Look at that car over there!” Aside from saying those words, you will probably point and glance back at your friend to see if he’s looking the same direction, then look back at the car to help direct his gaze. We do all of these things without really thinking about them, but they are usually absent or fractured in some way in a child with autism.Remember the signs of autism don’t deal with just speech, but with communicative efforts as a whole. If your child does not speak well, but points and has joint attention, the problem is likely to be a general speech delay and not autism.

Another area of concern is obsessive or ritualistic behaviors. For some children this may be an obsession with a certain topic to the exclusion of everything else. For others it may be an insistence upon certain routines, such as driving only one particular route to school. Often these children will become extremely frustrated and upset if their routines are disturbed, triggering the tantrums commonly associated with the disorder. Play may be unusual in nature; for example, instead of rolling toy cars and making “vroom” noises, the child may simply spin the wheels or line them up.

The main thing to remember is that all children may occasionally do something out of the ordinary. Some are simply not big talkers or are shy with strangers. When several of these symptoms are exhibited consistently, however, that is a red flag and you should mention your concerns to your child’s pediatrician.