Possible autism… help?

My son just turned 3 and actually has not been diagnosed… but I’ve suspected he might be on the spectrum for a while. It runs in my family… and my son has never been hitting milestones “on time” like other kids his age. He didn’t start crawling until about 9-10 mos… and didn’t start walking until about 18 mos. His speech is delayed… He seems to understand a lot, and he says a good amount of words, but mostly jargon… and he doesn’t put many words together. He points to a lot of things even though I try to get him to use his words. He’s a SUPER picky eater. He’ll only eat a handful of things and everyone judges me for it even though I try to get him to try things. He’s perfectly content playing by himself and loves to line things up… he refuses to even sit on the toilet at all. He hates getting his haircut because the loud clippers scare him. I guess I’m just rambling about all the little things I’ve noticed… But I got him started in speech therapy about 6 mos ago,and I’m not quite sure if it’s helped… I haven’t seen a whole lot of improvement in his communication yet. No one has seemed to recommend anything with autism testing or however it works… but I feel like I see a lot of obvious signs and want to figure out how to help him. What would you guys do from here if you were me?? Sometimes I feel sort of hopeless and like I’m failing as a parent.

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First of all you’re not failing as a parent you sound like you’re doing everything you can to help your son. I’m not sure how it works in the US but what you’ve said here sounds like it could be autism and the sooner he gets assessed the better so you can get him the correct support. My son is almost 3 and just been diagnosed I knew from an early age he was different. Is your son in daycare? If not I’d probably contact your dr and express your concerns and don’t give up :) good luck

This sounds exactly like my boy, he started nursery at 3 and they referred him through and he has just been diagnosed! Like Sam said, I’m not sure how it works in the US. My boy is the exact same with speech and actually at his assessment they said he is a gestalt language processor which means he’s learning language in a totally different way. Look at meaningfulspeech on Instagram and she does stuff to help identify if your child is a gestalt processor! I think we all feel like we’re failing! It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had and I doubt myself most days! 😂

@Sam thank you 😭 he’s not in day care yet… he has preschool orientation tomorrow so that will be a huge help I’m sure! It’s hard to know how much of it is on being an only child and if it’s been my parenting or what… but I’m hoping this will make a difference.

@Emma I’d never even heard of that! I looked it up and it does sound a lot like him… he repeats phrases often in a singing voice… yesterday I asked him to put the rest of his toys in the bin and he goes “restttt awayyyy” and picked them up… that very well could be it. Thank you!

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