“How did you know your child was autistic?”
If you are wondering what early signs we saw in Jonah that might have been indicators of autism, here is my honest answer.
We didn’t see them.
At least not right away.
He made great eye contact. He didn’t “hand flap” a lot, or have any obvious sensory-seeking habits.
He smiled with his whole face and laughed with his whole body. And he laughed…
All. The. Time.
When he was an infant, he was so “easy” I used to joke that all we had to do was feed him, water him, and turn him toward the sun, and he’d be content.
But He was always pushing his boundaries. Before long, he was walking, then he was climbing. By 16 months, he was consistently climbing out of his crib at night.
The first time I thought “something might not be right,” was when he was a around 2 years old.
I was holding him and trying to show him how to “whistle.” As soon as I whistled a sustained low note, Jonah hauled off and slapped me in the face out of nowhere.
I had no idea why that set him off. But every time I would whistle that note, Jonah would react violently.
It was about the same time, he started “running laps.” He used to find a repeating path around the house or park or wherever we were and would follow it. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
I also noticed when he played with blocks, he always lined his blocks up so the colors and letters were facing up.
He didn’t have any desire to play with other children, and he never played “pretend” with any of his toys. It was always just sitting and watching parts of the toy like a wheel spinning, or observing the “function” of the toy like watching his marble run.
But the biggest indicator of autism in Jonah was at three years old, he had virtually no speech at all.
Not only that, he didn’t attempt to use speech as a form of communication for his needs and instead, hand-led is around the house. If he wanted a drink, he wouldn’t point to the tap, or to a cup… he would simply grab our hand, lead us over to the shelves, and throw our hand toward the cups (indicating for US to get him something to drink.)
And as his awareness increased, the lack of any solid communication methods really started to take its toll.
That’s when the MELTDOWNS (Capital “M”) started. His anxiety and frustration would rise with his inability to adequately express the idea his brain had formulated.
I had to start guessing what he wanted. If I didn’t guess right, he would physically DESTROY the choice I made to communicate that I didn’t understand what he wanted.
If I brought him the wrong toy, he would hurl it as hard as he could, with intent to break or destroy it and anything in its path. Then he would fixate on that toy and continue throwing or breaking it. He started hitting and kicking while he screamed.
His sleep patterns completely changed. He would stay up for hours at night.
When Jonah was diagnosed as autistic, they gave him a severity rating of “level 3.”
I’m not sure if he exhibited MORE autistic traits AFTER his diagnosis or that I finally knew what to look for after he was evaluated, but for so long, I simply didn’t RECOGNIZE “autism” in Jonah until someone showed me.
See, I KNEW autism existed, but I didn’t RECOGNIZE it when I saw it.
I was not “aware.”
#AusomeApril