Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by abnormal social and communicative development, as well as repetitive behavior. Some children with autism develop normally during the first year of their life, but eventually experience a regression in their development. Most autistic children exhibit at least some symptoms very early on.
The Earliest Symptoms
Typically, the earliest symptoms observed by parents are problems in sleeping and eating patterns, says Dr. E. Werner in a study published in the “Journal of Autism Developmental Disorders” in April 2000. Autistic infants may be very picky eaters and seem to take longer to learn to sleep entire nights. These kinds of problems are typical for many other developmental delays as well and are not specific to autism alone.
Social Development
Parents of autistic children often point out that before their baby was diagnosed, their child was very easy to take care of and rarely seemed to need any attention outside of the basic care. Parents frequently fail to realize that this may be a sign of abnormal social development. From very early on, autistic infants do not like to be held, and do not seek eye contact typical of developing children. When an autistic infant is picked-up, he often becomes “dead weight” or begins to cry.
Joint Attention
Long before an infant says his first words, he uses gestures to communicate with others. The development of joint attention gestures is of special interest for the diagnosis of autistic children. In joint attention, a child shares his interest in something by first looking at an object, and then looking at an adult. He may repeat this several times while smiling and cooing. Later, a child will learn to point at these object that interest him and utter a word or two to describe it. Joint attention either develops late in autistic infants, or it fails to develop at all, according to a study published by Dr. Plauché Johnson and his colleagues in “Pediatrics” in November 2007.
Language Development
Among the most common initial symptom recognized by parents is delayed speech development. Typically, developing children say their first words around their first birthday and begin to use two-word sentences when they are approximately 1.5 years old. It takes longer for autistic children to reach both of these milestones, and after reaching them, autistic children typically learn new words at a slower rate, say doctors A. De Giacomo and E. Fombonne in the September 1998 issue of “European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.”
References
- “Journal of Autism Developmental Disorders”; Brief report: Recognition of autism spectrum disorder before one year of age: a retrospective study based on home videotapes; E. Werner, G. Dawson, J. Osterling and N. Dinno; April 2000.
- PubMed Central: The Onset of Autism: Patterns of Symptom Emergence in the First Years of Life
- Archives of General Psychiatry: Absence of Preferential Looking to the Eyes of Approaching Adults
- PubMed.gov: Parental recognition of developmental abnormalities in autism
- Pediatrics: Identification and Evaluation of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders
