Why I didn't suspect my son had autism.

Up until my son was three and a half years old, I had no suspicion of his autism. Several things made me think he just had a simple speech delay. For instance, he has great eye contact, and he loves to smile at people while looking at them. I often get compliments from acquaintances and strangers alike about my awesome smile. Also, he loves pointing and possesses great joint attention. He does not like playing on his own and often loves Mom and Dad to be involved in his play, which includes imaginative play like cooking soup in his toy kitchen and feeding it to us or to his stuffed animals. Besides these, he does not have obvious gross motor repetitive behaviors. 

I also strongly doubted he had autism because his pediatrician at the time was not at all concerned. My son had met all his milestones within the regular timeline, and there was nothing amiss. As I mentioned before, the only thing I was concerned about was his speech. 

 When our son turned two years old, we took him to private speech therapy. This therapy was not recommended by our pediatrician, but we wanted to help our son use spoken language. At our third visit with the speech pathologist, I expressed my concerns about the possibility of our son having autism. We also mentioned that a beloved family member has autism, which made me think about this possibility. As she listened intently, she reassured us that there was no reason to be concerned. She worked with several children with autism; according to her, she could tell that our son was not on the spectrum. After this visit, I felt relieved. Although, in retrospect, I can see that at that moment in time, I was more open to the idea of our son being autistic than I was a year before my husband and I received the official diagnosis, a little less than a month after he turned four. 

We also had a lovely Early Interventionist when our son was two until he turned three. Despite working with us for several months, she never mentioned to us whether she suspected our son had autism, nor did she recommend getting on the waitlist for an assessment. A month before our little one turned three, we enrolled him in a daycare centre. I was so reluctant, but I agreed to do so because that was the recommendation of our pediatrician. He told us that in order for our son to gain speech, he needed to be surrounded by peers. So when he entered daycare in September, our previous EI stopped working with us, and a new EI who worked at the childcare centre was assigned to us. The daycare staff also did not mention anything to us regarding our son's special needs. When we enrolled him, we had no idea about his diagnosis, so we had no way of letting them know about it. When I took him out of daycare two months after he first began to attend, there was no feedback from the staff regarding my son.

I also did not suspect my son had autism, for he is our first child, and he was born during the covid pandemic when we were unable to see other families with children or anyone at all. It was only my husband, I, and our precious and beautiful bundle of joy. Our extended family is all abroad, so we had no chance to know something was different about our son, because we did not interact with any other children his age. 

It wasn't until our little boy was about three and a half years old that the Lord began to move my heart towards the very real possibility that our child might be different, unique, extra special. At that time, I was so big and tired because God had answered our prayers, giving us a second child, a little sister to our boy! Hip hip hurray! Thank You, Lord God!