When parents ask me if I think their child might be on the spectrum they typically ask based upon two or three common habits. The first is not making eye contact. The second is repeating words, either back to them, or using the same words over and over. The third is about repetitive motions – which we often call stimming.
The reason why is they are something obvious to people who aren’t trained. There are often other signs too, but they might be missed because you don’t know to look for them. I like to remind them, that I am not a clinician, and therefore cannot diagnose, but I know things to look for, and not look for. Let’s look at how we did an initial test ourselves with one of our sons.
Eye Contact
Not making eye contact is often one of the first signs parents detect when they think their child might be on the autism spectrum. However, it is important to remember that children are often very distractible. Are they not looking at you, or are they looking at something else, like the TV with their favorite cartoon, or a tablet?
You are fighting for attention with your child, and you’ve got lots of competition. To reduce this competition, we did several things.
First we tried it in different rooms. You might have a favorite picture on the wall in one room, a TV in another, and a view outside with their swing set in another. Try different locations, and identify if they are not making eye contact, or if they are looking at something else.
Next, we tried redirection. We would tell our son “look at our eyes.” Sometimes we’d gently move their head so they were looking at us. We checked to see how long they could hold their gaze, and if they might point their head toward us, but look away with their eyes.
Finally, we checked various times. We checked different times of the day, different days, and different locations, to see if we could find some time when they weren’t as distracted. Let’s face it, for a normal three to five year old, distractions are easy to come by. So we checked, and not just once or twice, but multiple times to see if it was maybe just a bad day.
Once we realized they were not holding our gaze, we realized this was a potential issue. This, of course, doesn’t mean autism, but it is common in those on the spectrum.
Repeating Words Back – Parroting
When teaching a child to speak, asking them to repeat words is a common thing. We hand them their bottle, saying “bottle”, asking them “can you say bottle?” Most babies and toddlers cannot say back words initially, but start to make progress when they start parroting it back to the adult who is attempting to get them to speak.
This, of course, is a huge step early on. As parents we want our kids to say mommy and daddy back to us. No one bats an eye when a child parrots this back, but as they continue to grow and physically mature, we worry when their speech also doesn’t mature.
The biggest way we checked, is we moved away from handing them objects and naming them i.e. “Here’s your bottle. Do you want your blankie?” to asking them an open-ended question. “What do you want to eat?” “Which video would you like to watch, Elmo or Bear?”
The questions we posed were simple and could be answered with just one or two words. In our cases, they often repeated the last couple of words of the sentence. That made us wonder if they understood the question. Speech and communication disorders are common with those on the spectrum, and thus this was one of our first hints that we might need to get them tested.
When we met our first son’s first teacher she was telling us about some of the students that would be in his class. One little boy had near perfect enunciation – quite the accomplishment for a kindergartner. However, he only spoke back the last word of what was told to him. He had no context for his speech. Our son was similar, but not as severe. With both of them, they were focusing on getting speech past that stage. With others in the class, they were trying to get them to that stage as they were non-verbal.
So check multiple times to see if this not speaking, or just repeating words or phrases back, occurs in different situations. Who knows? Maybe they were just tired, or having a bad day. We tried different times of the day, with different questions and topics.
Next Steps
If your child is facing either of these situations you might want to see if they can be screened. Depending upon their age and your location, you might be able to go through the local school system, or you may have to pay for this yourself. Your test might come back without a diagnosis, which might buy you some peace of mind, or it might come back with a diagnosis and allow you to starting helping your child.
