Autism signs (including speech delay) in a young toddler. Dexter at 12 to 18 months.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so as you can tell from the type of this video I'm going to be talking about my son Dexter we suspected Dexter may be autistic we had worries from being from him being quite young and I'm just gonna give a little introduction to what prompted us to have those thoughts what made us think there might be there might be a little bit different in some ways Dexter was born in November 2015 and we have made a video on his birth story which if I don't know why but if you want to go and watch it I will link it down below we've uploaded it onto our other channel he hid his early milestones on time so he smiled early actually he smiled very very early on he could hold he had very strong muscles he could hold his head up almost from birth and he he crawled at 6 months he was like an engaging happy little baby the first time I saw a difference in Dexter I was when Dexter was 12 months and my friend bought her little boy round who was 8 weeks younger I think I remember he was pointing at things and I remember thinking oh wow that's really uncommon this little her little boy it was pointed at things and my little boy didn't point at things but I did not think that my child was behind because I wasn't aware of what was supposed to happen when I just thought her boy was advanced and we took Dexter - it was like a music since we sing it that you know like the baby toddler groups there was just stuff to entertain babies that were plenty of babies around 12 months which was Dexter's age at the time all the children were very engaged in the music and what was happening and they were looking around and they were you know quite a few of them were staying by their parents for reassurance and it was new and I just remembered Texas spent the whole time chasing Meisel I took balls all around the room I thought was quite funny at the time but that was the first thing that got me thinking should he be more engaged than he is in the things that are around him anyway we got to about 14 13 14 months and my mom kept saying to me if he's starting to speak yet is he starting to you know it helps any words or say mom my dad that anything like that now again I did not know when children were supposed to stop speaking I was a first-time mom with very little experience of children and so I go oh man I googled it and their doctor Google said do not worry if your child is not speaking do not worry if your child is not trying to form words at this age as long as they are pointing things of interest responding to their name and blah blah blah all these things there Dexter wasn't doing and I just thought oh wow we have a problem and the more I googled the more I fell down the autism rabbit hole at this point we also noticed a bit of a what I think now is a regression and the regression we want some in terms of speech because he never spoke he it was more in terms of interaction in terms of eye contact and response to people and the thing is yeah this perfect child it's perfectly and then suddenly Oh know what it's like someone was telling you it was something wrong with them you suddenly have a lot of questions about the future the before about like why this happened and you know every allsorts goes to a head was it your fault gonna be hit like what's gonna happen to them and on top of that I was pregnant with my second son by that point so a whole lot of a bit emotions ran alongside that too so we got in contact with there with our health visitor and our health visitor as were a lot of professionals at this point were very much like you know he's a young child he's only 13 14 15 months even people were saying this it was very much a case at that point watch and wait to see what happened and we did see progression you know it didn't he didn't stay where he was he did progress in various areas but there was still something quite obviously different so the health visitor came around when he was around 18 months and I was saying at this point you know we need to see a specialist at this point we need to take this further and we need to help it'll help us to came around and she filled up this big long form but she used that to obtain a referral to a pediatrician a speech and language therapist and the additional needs nursing team but at this point I'm just going to talk a little bit about the red flags that we saw index time the things that prompted that referral red flag number one was in very poor eye contact now I'm not saying he had no eye contact when you did something interesting for example he loves music so when you would think to him he would stare at you he would look you in the eye for a long period of time and but the majority of the time he just seemed to ignore you and I guess that's a red flag number two and it goes kind of hand-in-hand that the poor eye contact was lack of response so at 19 months Dexter did not respond to his name at all and he would respond to certain verbal cues like he if you said what's this Dexter he would associate that with oh you've got something that he might want and he would turn around and look that and so I knew it wasn't his hearing we did go for hair and test anyway and his hearing came back fine it was just that response and almost like he didn't have the motivation to turn around to see what what you were possibly crawling in for he wouldn't point things out of interest to show us he wouldn't bring those things to engage in playing with him he didn't acknowledge strangers really so if somebody knew what in the room a lot of toddlers will look up who's this or maybe get bit wary Dexter like he didn't even notice that people in the room and when I'm saying all this about these red flags and they didn't happen every single time but this is what happened most of the time so most of the time he didn't give eye contact most of the time he didn't respond to strangers he did not mimic what we did or said so you could do something and a lot of toddlers babies even will try and copy Dexter did not do that dice would not copy what you did so when I say Dexter didn't speak he wasn't a silent child by any stretch of the imagination he was a very noisy child actually and what he's babbling I'll try to find the video for it but he's babbling it did not sound like you would expect it wasn't typical like my mom my Baba Baba and even like I know that's typical for a younger child but he wasn't even at that point yet it seems to be just mainly vowel sounds but making and non-speech sounds like rolling his tongue and humming and squealing and that kind of thing okay so I think this was the biggest one for me and that was know gesturing really so he couldn't he did not point out what if he wanted something he had no way no way of telling you but he wanted it and he wouldn't point to it he wouldn't lead you to the direction of it it didn't like result in meltdowns or anything he was a very very Placid child he was very happy child he didn't seem to want much he also he didn't wave he never waved he did clap his hands when he was young but he never he never waved although I will say at 19 months the first little bits of communication had started to happen he he would bring those things to so he would like bring us his juice cup too if he wanted more juice or if he wanted something opening he would bring it to us he would not make eye contact with us he would like try to put our hand on it alongside of this he did not follow a point if you pointed to something and went Dexter walk over there he he wouldn't so he was fine with routine he was fine with new places he in fact he loved new places if you moved exploring he was fine with crowds and bright lights and loud noises but from around about nine months old and he loved spinning things so he loved spinning wheels wheels especially he would spin things that weren't supposed to yeah like he would spin knives and forks on the floor he would spin his dummy on the floor he would turn a car upside down and spin it round on the floor and and at the same time he will get very very close to it to watch it spin like he loved to that visual input so at 19 months decks are very very almost non-existent pretending to play if he gave him a doll he wouldn't put it to bed or feed it or anything like that even that but held the telephone up to his ear to you know pretend to talk on the phone he never he never done anything anything like that it was his play was all quite literal oh the one thing he did do and although he would spin the wheels of toys he would also wear them along like how you would expect a child to play with the toy so he would do that as well he would world an alum and then he would be the rule it's been real he covered his ears if he was this was not not in response to noise he wasn't he definitely wasn't blocking out sound it was like when he was anxious or excited it definitely wasn't noise we could take him to the cinema he he were fireworks it wasn't noise it was oh my goodness I'm not sure about this situation I'm going to call my ears hyperactivity he was very very very hyperactive he loved running all the time he the second he could run he ran everywhere any time without any regard for where we were he would just run when he was excited he would he would flap his hands in excitement and not to communicate anything not to show to anybody else he was excited but he you know if it was particularly the TV if he loved the TV anything on TV he would he would flap his hands and get excited I'm just gonna go on and talk a little bit about the things that maybe positives for Dexter at the time at 19 months and things that were promising things that maybe confused me thinking this doesn't fit with an autism diagnosis of that doesn't fit with an autism diagnosis so first of all motor skills I know a lot of children with autism as toddlers have motor delays and all problems with balance things like that takes out excellent motor skills he had excellent balance he could run up and down hills no problem he didn't fall over very much he was very very very affectionate he loved cuddles he loved kisses he loved his mommy he needed a tall eye with him to get him to sleep because he wanted to you wanted that comfort he and I'm not I'm not joking this is probably what got me through that time knowing that whatever was going on and I still had a little boy who moved his mommy he had no problem with Messi play he liked some water and gloop and modern he loved all that stuff there were no sensitivities there he would interact with those if we played hide-and-seek with him he looked that he would come and seek us out and giggle and then run off and get us to chase him you could engage with him in chase games in back-and-forth chase games and so aside from the wheel spinning we had no issues or worries about the way he played he played with a wide variety of toys the way they were supposed to be played with for an appropriate length of time for his age so I spoke before about how Dexter did not point to what he wanted he did not point to communicate however at this point he had just started pointing to pictures in box he wouldn't cooperate with eye contact with us or he would point to things now looking back he was definitely interested in the name of everything he wanted to know the name of everything if you asked him to point to something he wouldn't he loved I mentioned this before but he loved of loved music he if there was a theme tune on even on the on an advert or on anything on the TV he would stop what he was doing and like spin round and walk I'd say he's always been so motivated by music loves it it was a great engagement tool for us it was a great way to you know get his attention to teach him things and he would perform the actions two different Nursery Rhymes so he would you like if you happy and you know it clap your hands he would do one the Baba not he would do those actions if he was in the mood he would do those actions to the nursery rhymes he would try sometimes to do a couple of animal noises he would like roar for a lion he would it didn't always sound very much like it was supposed to but it was an attempt if you got him if you got him like if you could get through to him and get him to listen and he would follow some instructions so he demonstrated that he did have some understanding it was difficult to know what he understood because it was difficult to get him to respond and engage with you in the first place so that was Dexter at 19 months Dexter at this current moment in time is two years and three months yes yeah 27 months he is I'm going to do an update video now I'm going to film an update video so you can see how far we've come where we are the one thing I will say is at this moment in time Dexter has not been diagnosed with anything he does not have autism spectrum disorder if you want to follow our journey then please feel for me to subscribe to this channel I will be documenting the highs and lows of this journey there are many of each and I would love to connect with other people in the same situation or other people that have been through it because it is hard this is the most emotionally difficult thing I have ever ever been through thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Nurturing Neurodiversity

Views: 345,595

Keywords: autism, autistic toddler, autism baby, autistic baby, autism red flags, signs, austim evaluation, 18 month update, speech delay, boy, toddler

Id: oKTARoZGx5k

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 01 2018