Does my 20 month old daughter have autism?

My daughter is fascinated with lights, when we turn the lights on at night she walks about staring at them. If we go anywhere that has lights she keeps looking at them and doesn't pay attention where she is walking. We got her toys that has flashing lights and changes colour, she puts her face right on the lights and stares at them. We have also noticed that she is repetitive with her play time. She would turn her toys upside down and keeps spinning the wheels and stuff that spins. She also goes to all the cupboards and open and shuts them constantly. She has started to flap her arms sometimes and sometimes walks on her tip toes. I feel at times she just ignores me when I speak to her, most of the time she doesn't listen to me.

I'm just a bit worried as autism runs in both our families. On my side I have 4 nephews that have ADHD and one nephew is severely autistic. I myself have borderline personality disorder. On my partners side she has 2 brothers with ADHD and a sister with autism. We told the health visitor about our concerns and she just brushed it of and said that is expected behaviour in kids that age, this is our first child but do all kids act like this? She said it is to early to be diagnosed with autism, I think she said 3 years and upwards? she did say if my child is still showing symptoms at her 2 year assessment she will act on it.

So am I being over the top? Is my child acting normal?

Cheers 

Parents
  • Hi. As the others have said some of your daughters traits could be autistic but again lots of normal children also do these things. How is she doing development wise in other areas, such as language and understanding, social, eye contact etc? My son has just been diagnosed at 3, even though I knew it at about 14 months. I'm happy to talk about  anything if you need it x 

Reply
  • Hi. As the others have said some of your daughters traits could be autistic but again lots of normal children also do these things. How is she doing development wise in other areas, such as language and understanding, social, eye contact etc? My son has just been diagnosed at 3, even though I knew it at about 14 months. I'm happy to talk about  anything if you need it x 

Children
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