Screening for Autism at 18 mos & 2 yrs

[Polly]

This was the top story on ABC, CBS, and NBC last night:

American Academy of Pediatrics New Guidelines for Screening for Autism

You can see the stories here:

Video: CBS Evening News

Article: CBS The Early Show

The AAP is recommending all pediatricians do a screening at 18 mos and 2 yrs to check for various "red flags" of autism. These flags may present as:

Not responding to name (no turning head, acknowledgment)
Poor eye contact or none at all
No pointing to objects or waving by 1 year
Lack of babbling
Smiling late

BTW, just for comparison--Phoebe smiled right on time, around 9-10 weeks. She "babbled" but it wasn't like other kids, though we never really realized it was anything out of the ordinary. We noticed poor eye contact with us around 6-9 mos, but she still made it. She never waved...that was probably the first time I thought something was odd, and she was about a year old. I thought she just didn't "get it" and would eventually. She STILL does not wave. At 6 months, she started really getting into dangling objects. Anything that could capture her attention to spin obsessively--keys, shoestring, necklace, etc....she LOVED that. She would take her Elmo baby doll and dangle it by its little chew/teething piece. She could do that for an hour if we let her. She is very sensitive to touch from other people. Mommy, daddy, grandma, that's one thing. Other people touching her freaks her out a bit.

And obviously, she still is not talking (save for some random words), though she makes TONS of vocalizations, it's like her own language. It's quite amazing.

Other than the stuff above, she acts like a totally normal 2 year old!!

So if you suspect anything with your little one, be sure to tell your pedi as early as possible. Do not take the "wait and see" approach--it is the worst thing you can do with these kiddoes. If we hadn't raised suspicions with our pedi at 18 and 21 months we'd be so far behind with help for her. Resources will be stretched very thin soon (they already are in many states) because of the prevalence of this disorder, so don't hesitate.

[Tiggergirl0325]

I think it's an awesome idea! I know they've been discussing it for awhile and I'm glad it's finally an official guideline.

It's so important to educate parents, especially first time parents. It's so hard to catch this stuff early with your first child...unless you have a NT child to compare them too, you don't really see them as different. Even after all the evaluations and diagnoses with Abby, we didn't really "get" just how atypical she was until Lucas got to the age she was when we started her therapies. They were like night and day with pointing, interaction, babbling, smiling, etc ( And she's not even on the spectrum). A few months ago we were going through our camcorder tapes to label them and came across one of Abby at around 16 or 17 months....it was so surreal. She was just in her own little world and so unresponsive...and yet we still were like "Abby come here, do this....oh, you want to do that? Okay!" As if she was actually communicating with us instead of just going about her business oblivious to the rest of us.

It's so frustrating to see kids that don't really get checked out until they're in preschool or later. That's so much lost time! And the worst is that it's some of the most valuable time that's being lost.