Hi Everyone
I am mum to William who is 19 months. He is right at the beginning of being assessed for ASD.
Myself and my husband have had concerns about some of his behaviour, as have close family members.
William does not have any words yet, nor does he communicate with us in any way. He does a lot of hand flapping, and occasional spinning (mostly whilst he is sitting or lying down) He has recently started to spin objects in his hands, like the remote control and my mobile phone. He doesn’t show much interest in his or his older brothers toys (Harry is 3), instead he spends most of the day running up and down the house in the same direction and pattern.
He doesn't answer to his name very often, although he does occasionally, he has also recently started to bite himself on the forearm, not in frustration, just when he is sat down. He hates going into shops, if I am walking him to the shops in the pram he is happy, but as soon as I enter a shop he goes crazy and starts screaming and going stiff. Sometimes it gets so bad that I have no choice but to leave the shop.
We are having trouble with him at bed time too. He has always been unsettled at night, we put this down to his constant ear infections. He has recently been diagnosed with a milk intolerance, and after being off milk for about ten days, he was sleeping 12 hours a night. He will go to bed awake for his nap in the afternoon, and settles just fine, he sleeps really heavily in the day, and I often have to wake him up because he is sleeping too long. However at night we have a real fight with him. If we put him to bed awake he is really unsettled, crying/screaming and up turns all of the bedding out of his cot, and even takes off his pyjamas. We tend to bring him downstairs, as he disturbs his older brother. We used to be able to rock him to sleep, but he fights this now, going stiff, arching his back, screaming and pushing us away. We usually spend a couple of hours fighting with him until he finally falls asleep.
The health visitor has been out to see us today, and agreed that he needs some further investigation, so has referred us to a Paediatrician.
I just wanted to hear some other stories on peoples experience of diagnoses, such as length of time from start of investigation to diagnoses. I was also interested to hear if all of the symptoms are black and white, or if there is a middle ground? William can sometimes show all of the above mentioned behaviours, and be very vacant in his response. Then yesterday when my dad came over, he was clearly pleased to see him, following him round etc. Then minutes later he was off in his own world, running an identical pattern over the patio outside and flapping his hands.
I had an interesting experience yesterday. William has a long history over the last 12 months of ENT problems, he has had 10 ear infections and 4 tonsillitis since last May. He is under an ENT for this, but I ended up at the hospital with him early hours of yesterday, as he had been screaming terribly all night, and he was in a very bad way refusing food and drink etc. Whilst I was in the waiting room I was sat opposite a lady with a teenage girl. We got chatting as you do, and she was asking some strange questions about Williams likes eg what toys he likes and what does he like to play with. She said that he reminded her of her own son at this age. We got talking some more, and I said that I had concerns about his development, when I mentioned ASD, she seemed relieved and said that she hadn't wanted to say anything, but she has a 17 year old son who is Autistic, and had been watching William, and he reminded her of her son, in some of his actions and his lack of eye contact.
Me and my husband just don't know what to think about it all, some days we think he is fine, but then other days he shows signs of being a little bit different. We realise and understand that a diagnoses is going to be a lengthy process, and also understand that health care professionals will be very reluctant to comment specifically on his behaviour, and confirm they think he has ASD. That's why I thought it would be good to talk on here.
Thank you in advance for any response.
