Hi
My 2 year old has currently be put on the autism assessment waiting list after one session with her speech therapist. She is unsure whether she is on the spectrum, but strongly suspects.
My daughter currently has no words at 27 months and choses not to babble unless we instigate it. She also has been doing this kicking out both legs motion for approximately the past 189 months. We raised concerns about this, but was always told she would grow out of it. We sent a short video clip to her speech therapist last week and she acted so quickly to get doctors appointment and to arrange to go on the autism assessment waiting list. Her concern is the way she contorts her face when she does this movement. My daughter does this movement on all sorts of occasions - when sat at her high stool at table, when sat in car seat (she can do this movement for over 2 hours in car seat on journeys), when in our arms, when sat watching and also just started doing the leg kicking movements whilst in her cot face down. It is when we saw her doing this we sent video to the speech therapist.
On the weekend she was given a belated Christmas present from her uncle, a box of all the letters in the alphabet with picture of the word attached. Within a couple of hours of holding the pictures one by one to us and us telling her wait the picture is, she was able to pick out the object from a pile of all the pieces on the floor. So many of these words she had not come across before, but was able to pick out the correct picture to the ones we were asking for. Every time she picked out a picture she would put it back in the box, put the lid on, open and then make a gesture for the next word. We found it astounding how quickly she managed to link the words to these pictures. She struggled with 2, Vegetables and Umbrella. She plays with this for hours.
We strongly suspect my wife is on the spectrum and she has been accepted for an assessment of her own which we are awaiting a date for.
Sorry for the long post, I have limited knowledge of autism and looking to see if anyone has had similar things with there child to try and understand a little more.