How did I realise my child was Autistic?

At first he was fine. Better than fine.

He was engaging in imaginative play well ahead of when he should have been able to. Preschool teachers remarked on it. He was calm, focused, happy, vocal. He loved being read to. He could imitate very many animals when asked. He could point out any colour on a colourful toy when asked. He wanted to use his toy drill to turn screws in the veranda like the carpenter did. He looked at us a lot. He hugged us and kissed us all the time.

Then one day I realised something had slowly, slowly gone ever so badly wrong. He'd lost almost all the abilities he'd gained.

At Xmas 2017, when he was two and a half years old, I wrote down what I was seeing:

• Non-verbal (He'd say one word per week perhaps. He was more verbal a year earlier).
• Almost completely non-vocal for a time in late 2017.
• Mostly makes "dolphin" noises (squeaks, squeals and breathing-in grating sounds).
• Runs around constantly in circles fixated on specific spots on the floor (and gets upset if you block the view of them).
• Flaps hands up and down to show excitement.
• No eye contact any more.
• Repetitive movements.
• Aggressive when upset in a way we can't seem to distract him from (biting and gouging our faces).
• Almost completely not interested in toys any more, except to bite and lick them.
• Not interested in animals any more (real, soft or cartoon).
• Not interested in playing games with us any more.
• Not pointing to things any more.
• Not able to understand pointing any more.
• Not able to understand instructions.
• Will want to read a book but then flip straight through it and get up and continue to run and run and run...

Then I heard an interview with someone who described the same thing, and how they found out that it was Regressive Autism (now called PDD-NOS). And I cried. Writing this is very, very hard in fact.

For us it was like a bereavement. All the expectations of seeing him grow up and have a life, a family, a career... in jeopardy.

Not gone - but no longer at all certain. It was time to do a lot of research. Luckily for my son, I'm quite used to that as I've recovered from Mononucleosis (Glandular Fever) which nearly killed me from a secondary infection and landed me a stay in hospital at age 30 (in 2000) and then Lyme Disease in 2010 (confirmed via PCR DNA). Both of which are diseases which standard medicine is surprisingly bad at handling (by the frank admission of the doc at the specialist Infectious Diseases Unit in the hospital treating me).

Reading stuff like this on other sites has brought me to tears so, just know that as of the end of 2018, a year later, he is recovering. Today he wanted help to do something and for the first time ever he called "Mamma!" (he's said Mamma before but he's not called her to help him). It's a long, long road and it looks very different for everyone (within the broad context of what are commonly known as "biomed" interventions) but there is hope! See What would I do if I realised my child was Autistic?