Our journey into the world of autism is only about 2months young. However, I suppose we have been living with the reality of it for a couple of years without knowing it. E was born Feb 2008. It was a normal birth and delivery (albeit at lightening speed!!) Life with E for his first year of life seemed pretty typical on the whole. Perhaps there were some early warning signs, but when viewed in isolation, they didn't seem like anything to worry about. He was a VERY unsettled baby. I could never get into a feeding/sleeping routine. He was real hard work up until at least 6months of age. Of course, now I wonder if autism had anything to do with it.
On the whole, E seemed like a pretty 'normal' baby. We started having some behaviour issues with him probably around 18mths of age. However, it all seemed in the normal bounds of the onset of 'terrible twos'. We did note some things early on that were different about E, but we put them down to personality:
- although he was interactive and smiley, there was an emotional distance as a baby. Most of my extended family didn't feel like they got to 'know' E until well into his second year.
- he didn't do 'finger' food until well after one year old. I had to spoon feed him for a long time.
- he wouldn't chew food until quite late either. He didn't like 'bits'.
- he didn't put things in his mouth as a babe. This did concern me a little because I knew this was how babies are meant to explore their world.
Into his second year we noted
- he was an 'introvert'
- he wouldn't comply - he wasn't interested in adult approval. For example, when looking at a picture and saying 'where's the dog?', he would never point or show any engagement in what I was doing with him
- he didn't point
- around 18mths he became increasingly anxious in new environments. I couldn't go anywhere unfamiliar by myself with the 3 boys. E needed my complete attention and even then he didn't cope.
- he had delayed speech - by age 2, he spoke about 6 words.
- he was hard to 'get to know'; he 'played his cards close'. He never gave much away about himself.
- for his second birthday, I didn't know what to get him because I didn't know what he liked other than balls.
After 2:
- disturbed sleep became the norm, waking 2-3 times (if not more) during the night.
- his behaviour became worse
- he started headbanging when angry or frustrated
When E was 2.5yrs old we took him to an audiologist to have his hearing checked. This was just to rule any hearing problems out - his hearing was fine. However, despite having a speech assessment done by a speech pathologist and being engaged in a language group through the local health clinic, it was the audiologist of whom spent about 10min with E, who suggested I have him assessed. He noticed he engaged differently with him (or not at all) and was incredibly unsettled during the test. Of course, this sent me home to begin diagnosis by internet (well not exactly, but you know how it is!!)
Thoughts of possible autism had passed through my mind once or twice in earlier times, but my naive assumptions about people with autism is that they didn't like affection. E loves affection. He is extremely cuddly -in fact, he would be happy to have a cuddle for most of the day if it was available to him. But once I started researching autism and its symptoms, I realised this is not the case. There is such a wide range of symptoms and yes, lack of affection is one of them.... but it is not the same in every person. It is possible to enjoy affection and still have ASD. So here is where our journey began.
No comments:
Post a Comment