Posted by Pam

I'm the mother of Ethan. He is 2 years; 8 months old. He has not yet been
given a diagnosis of any kind and I am finding this quite frustrating. I
would like to hear about what the onset of PDD/Autism looked like when it
began in other children. Was there ever a period when you believed you had
a perfectly normal child?

I believed this to be true about Ethan until he was about 16 months old.
At that time, although he was beginning to develop language (about 30 words
at 14 months), he seemed to be "out of it" a lot of the time. He seemed
lethargic, and although he formerly responded appropriately to people,
became less responsive. Although I can't say that he regressed, his
development slowed to a crawl during his second year. It wasn't until
about 3 months ago that he gained much more functional language than he had
over a year ago. Thankfully, he has had an explosion in vocabulary lately
and is often using it appropriately. He is speaking in 2 and 3 word
phrases, although he still does a lot of gesturing, and comprehension seems
lousy.

However, he also has a lot of language that isn't very functional, like
songs, dialogue from videos, echolalia. He is rarely quiet, but most of
his language is directed at no one in particular, and a lot is completely
unintelligible. He also has some abnormal behaviours, like running in
circles around objects, occasional hand flapping, problems with transitions
(especially getting dressed to go out), lining objects up. He is also
non-compliant unless it suits him (He IS TWO, so I know sometimes they are
terrible anyway), and throws tantrums often.

I've had him to a PDD specialist, who is reluctant to diagnose him at this
age, and won't do any formal assessment of him for another 6 months. I'm
not hung up on having him labelled, but I'm wondering if there is any real
reason for her to hold off on making a diagnosis. Is there much chance
that these behaviours and delays will just disappear?

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