Everyone develops differently and, as a parent, identifying signs of autism can be difficult. There are different levels of the spectrum and just because your child may have some deficits doesn’t necessarily mean that they are on the spectrum. With that being said, we understand that this can be frustrating and we are here to help.

If you’re concerned about your child being on the spectrum, here are some important things to pay attention to and ask yourself:

• How are they developing socially?
• Is their verbal communication developing?
• Is their non-verbal communication developing?
• Do they make eye contact?
• Do they respond to facial expressions?
• Are they aware of social cues?
• Does your child have restricted interests?
• Do they participate in repetitive motor movements?

It is also important to be aware of where your child should be developmentally for their age and make sure that reflects your expectations from them.

Now that you have some specific characteristics to look for, this should help you feel comfortable in taking the next step in either looking into a diagnosis or seeing that maybe your child is just developing quicker/slower in different domains. Either way, we hope that this post is able to help you gain some further insight into the early signs of Autism.