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20 month old with early ASD signs, doctor suggests alternative reasons

JamesMS

Hello everyone,

I have a wonderful 20 month old son (my only child), who for the last few months has been showing signs of having ASD. He has no speech (though certainly makes lots of emotive noises), does not respond to his name, has limited eye contact at times, no pointing or waving, and likes running in circles. 

His mum and I have recently started having him assessed. She is being very positive, however for entirely personal (and probably selfish) reasons this has hit me hard and this evening I was speaking with my doctor to try and get some counselling.

When I described my sons behaviors, he claims to have seen similar situations that were not ASD but actually due to a lack of adequate parental contact, and with hard work can be reversable. Some parents might be offended by this, but if I'm honest I can't say it's entirely impossible. It's certainly true that due to work pressures I'm not able to spend as much time as I'd like with my son, and while his mother is able to stay at home with him, his first year and a half was somewhat unusual, uneventful and a bit isolated. Maybe we just haven't done enough to engage him?

Normally every time I speak with a health professional about my son they refuse to be drawn on the odds of his having ASD. This is the first time I've heard someone actually suggest an alternative reason. I'm wondering if anyone else here has ever had a similar suggestion? 

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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Well, there are a number of ways of interpreting the events so far which are

    1) you were bullied at school

    2) you have some personality changes that you attribute to bullying

    3) you have a child who is behaving noticably differently

    4) You score 29 on the aq test

    5) you are struggling with the duties of parenthood

    My speculative interpretation would be

    1) You were bullied at school because you stood out as being different somehow. You didn't fit in and have a lot of friends.

    2) Your personality may be due to the same difference that attracted the bullies or may be due to difficulties consequential on those differences.

    3) Your child has inherited your differences. People are much more aware of differences nowadays so your own (and your relatives) differences as a child would have been dismissed as eccentricity or non-specific strangeness.

    4) A score of 29 is sufficiently far from "normal" to place you on the spectrum but you perhaps manage well enough not to require or qualify for an actual diagnosis.

    5) A person with autism/Aspergers may well struggle with parenthood. It may not come naturally and you may be accused of being a poor parent.

    Most of your story is my story except that I score a higher aq test. Most people with ASD are bullied at school. You can be unaware of why you are different as this is an invisible condition. I have a rich family history of eccentricity but nobody was diagnosed until me. Awareness of autism is growing and was unrecognised when I was a child. It is still normal to fiund doctors who cannot spot it and will dismiss the possibility out of hand.

    The score of 29 does not mean that you do not have autism. It means that it cannot be sure one way or another so you know that you don't know whether you have autism.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Well, there are a number of ways of interpreting the events so far which are

    1) you were bullied at school

    2) you have some personality changes that you attribute to bullying

    3) you have a child who is behaving noticably differently

    4) You score 29 on the aq test

    5) you are struggling with the duties of parenthood

    My speculative interpretation would be

    1) You were bullied at school because you stood out as being different somehow. You didn't fit in and have a lot of friends.

    2) Your personality may be due to the same difference that attracted the bullies or may be due to difficulties consequential on those differences.

    3) Your child has inherited your differences. People are much more aware of differences nowadays so your own (and your relatives) differences as a child would have been dismissed as eccentricity or non-specific strangeness.

    4) A score of 29 is sufficiently far from "normal" to place you on the spectrum but you perhaps manage well enough not to require or qualify for an actual diagnosis.

    5) A person with autism/Aspergers may well struggle with parenthood. It may not come naturally and you may be accused of being a poor parent.

    Most of your story is my story except that I score a higher aq test. Most people with ASD are bullied at school. You can be unaware of why you are different as this is an invisible condition. I have a rich family history of eccentricity but nobody was diagnosed until me. Awareness of autism is growing and was unrecognised when I was a child. It is still normal to fiund doctors who cannot spot it and will dismiss the possibility out of hand.

    The score of 29 does not mean that you do not have autism. It means that it cannot be sure one way or another so you know that you don't know whether you have autism.

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