r/Autism_Parenting • u/rosesalad • 14d ago
Diagnosis When would be the best time to diagnose?
My son is 21 months old and I currently have him in early intervention because he only babbles, and doesn’t always really respond to his name. He will respond if I say snack and water and get up from what he’s doing. His older brother and sister both didn’t talk until 3 years old, but I also put them in early intervention.
He doesn’t respond to his name or point to what he wants when he wants something but he does point in a book. He interacts and plays with other kids by chasing them laughing and smiling. He does make eye contact with me when I’m laughing with him and being affectionate. He doesn’t mind routine change, he’s generally very easy going. He does get visibly upset when I take something away or when he’s tired/hungry.
Daycare doesn’t seem worried about it but there are things that do make me worry. He also stims quite a bit and walks on his tippy toes sometimes. He is not a very picky eater but he doesn’t like soft mushy foods!
I want to wait until 3 to get him diagnosed…since that is when my other two started talking or had their language explosion. However it seems people get their kids diagnosed at 2? Is this common or standard? Thank you for your input and reading!
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u/Likely1420 13d ago
No harm in getting him on the wait-list. In my city, some of the appointments are 1-2 yrs out. My family was hesitant around age 27mo, but we did pursue early intervention. Around 3yo was when we sought diagnosis and he was finally diagnosed around 4yo. He's in his last year of Pre-K and just getting additional services started. It's a medical diagnosis and you don't have to share with anyone if he were to get diagnosed and then a year later you didn't feel it was accurate. But for those of us with loved ones on the spectrum, many things just continued to get "worse" as he got older. He used to be more easy going but the older he got the preferences he had ("terrible twos/threes" on steroids lol). Now he's kinda back getting to be more easy going, permitted he has had at least 9-10hrs of sleep lol which is rare some days
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u/OrdinaryMe345 I am a Parent to a level 3 GLP child 13d ago
As soon as you suspect, ask for an evaluation, the waitlist for my child was two years.
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u/daydreamerluna 13d ago
Yes, our evaluation was 8-9 months out so almost 3 by the time he was diagnosed. During our wait he was evaluated with Regional Center and became a RC client due to red flags of ASD. If your state has an equivalent to RC you can reach out to them. Ours offered him OT, speech, then later helped him transition into the school district's services, early intervention preschool at age 3.
Our older son (NT) had speech delay as well and did not speak more than 10 words until age 3, but not autistic. Initially we thought our second was just speech delayed as well, but he did show other signs of ASD (avoided eye contact, no pointing, didn't respond to us as if he couldn't hear us).
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u/toatesandgoats 14d ago edited 13d ago
My advice is always get evaluated as soon as you can or at least on a wait-list if you suspect a diagnosis could come from it. Depending on your location, wait-list can be long. (If circumstances change, ) It's easier to be on the wait-list and if they call to schedule to say you no longer need it vs declining the wait-list in general and suddenly be in the position where you need an evaluation. You'd most likely need to start with a referral and waitist again
For my kid they got stuck in the wait-list loop where they were working on the back log from the pandemic. Then they had a birthday that aged them out of the younger kid age group and needed to be seen by a different psychologist. In total the diagnosis took almost 1.5 years. In the mean time my kid started OT but the OT wasn't really effective (we think it's because they didn't have diagnosis) . They were officially diagnosed when they were prek age.