My son Cj is 2 years old now. Up until he was 1 year old he was hitting all his milestones most of them he was doing early. He said mom, dada, yum yum, he clapped, he always looked people in the eyes, he responded to his name and played with his toys. He was early with crawling and walking. He stopped giving eye contact, didnt respond to his name, stopped saying dada and yum yum, no more clapping, and he mouthed every toy. Around the age of 1 I noticed he wasn't responding to his name anymore, he had just had tubes put in his ears about 3 months prior so we thought maybe he had hearing loss. We went through a series of testing and finally we had a sedated abr test done which showed his hearing was normal. At that point I went to the web to do some research. Autism popped up and I went through the list of things associated with autism. I asked a friend if she thought Cj may be autistic. I knew she worked with autistic kids in the past and she said she really believed my son had autism. I made an appointment with the pediatrician and at this time Cj was about 15 months old. His doctor spent about an hour with us to observe Cj and watch how he interacted with us and toys. She then sent us to have him evaluated for autism, he was 17 months old. A month later we went in for his results and at 18 months old Cj was diagnosed with autism. Cj has 4 therapys a week, he has 2 speech therapy's, 1 special educator, and 1 occupational therapist. He started those at 16 months old, now only 8 months later he is giving alot more eye contact, he is playing and observing his toys, he has started to say some words every now and then, and he is getting to the point where he plays with his big sister and cousin. I believe early intervention is key and it really helps.

Anonymous
Baltimore, MD