How Do You Know If It’s Autism or Not?

How do you even know if a child is on the spectrum or not? So in this video, I'll tell you seven things to look out for to think about when going through this. And chances are you're watching this video because your child is around two to two and a half years old and you haven't figured out whether your child is on the spectrum or not. And you just came back from the pediatrician. You listen to teachers, they say there is a risk, there's a suspicion, so on and so forth. My name is Ming from agentsofspeech.com, we help parents to get their children speaking better at home through speech therapy techniques. We've heard we helped the thousands of parents over the Internet. And here we go. So the first thing is you really don't. At two to two and a half year old, this kind of age range is really hard to pinpoint whether it is autism or not. Okay. As a matter of fact, if a child is on the spectrum, usually the onset, meaning when it happens is after two and a half. It could be three, three and a half to four. What we see and what we hear through case history as we take verbally interview parents as they come into our clinics and also our online training programs, we ask, it's usually three to four when it happens, when there's a regression or they start to lose interest, as the parents would put it, it's not my words. And what you should do at this point is to check out, clear out any other complications. The most important one is hearing. Do the hearing tests, make sure your child doesn't have a middle ear infection. Because a middle ear infection mimics a lot of the symptoms of autism. It shares a lot of symptoms of autism. So then if you know that you're talking about here, obviously he's not going to respond to his name that ready? So we have a whole different video about that you can check out somewhere here or in the description below we'll link that video about about hear loss. And the second thing is a lot of times the pediatricians will tell you to wait it out but, but the problem is about waiting out is it's up to, we're leaving it up to just checks. Given that you've been told about this risk that's going on. Right. One of the worst things that we can do in life is, okay, I'll just wait until to see if it is or is not right. And it's really difficult to have a conversation with parents about this as well because then they're like oh, what can I be in anyways? Because therapy, the line for therapy is really long. The you can do autism screeners in the USA that go all the way back to one year old, one and a half. You can already do screeners. But to get a real diagnosis it really is after three. Right. So what can you do in this situation is to educate yourself, educate yourself, learn more about the whole thing. Right. Just as a way to mitigate the risk. Okay. And as we say a lot of times, maybe this is the first time you're here. So hi, teaching a non verbal child that we're talking about like a two to a two and a half year old, some people call it plea, verbal, non speaking, whatever you like to call it. At the end of the day the treatment, the therapy goals are very similar, super similar. So you don't have to think too much. It's always going to be increasing the communication intent and we'll always start off with what the child wants for you. So. So that's why a lot of therapy is like teaching I want whatever because child wants something from you. Right. So in this situation we get something that your child wants and we teach a communication method for your child to get it. Okay. Instead of screaming, shouting, hand pulling, whatever that child is doing right now, we want to teach a different set of gestures, sounds, whatever. Communication means that it's a little bit more appropriate. Okay. So instead of waiting out, use that time to educate yourself on that. And we have a bunch of courses, just go to agentsofspeech.com Course link is also in the description. We teach a lot of that, especially in the micro course. It goes through a lot of the, the nitty gritty of how to do it. It's also free. The reason is so that I don't need to make a two hour video on YouTube. So just check it out there. Right. And then by the time you get to three to four years old, it should be pretty clear whether your child is on the spectrum or not. So whilst we're waiting for that clarity, period, as I was saying, go and educate yourself. Go get more speech therapy if you can. Usually speaking you cannot really get a lot of services given that there isn't diagnosis yet and that there's a huge line outside. Okay. And then why I say that at a three to four is because there, sometimes there's going to be this regression like it's from two to three or from birth to three or birth to two and a half, that little gap, that age range. Right. It will seem like Your child is typical developing, they're talking, they're learning words, they're playing. And then suddenly they get less and less interested in the. In talking, communicating and playing toys. And you don't see in 100% of the cases in some. So this regression happens. And I call it regression because I've recently made a video that maybe is a little bit more boring. So I'll just summarize it here. So this regression basically just means you have to remember why children on the spectrum use words. Usually it's for self entertaining purposes, right? Not really for communication. So when they lose a word, it's. They lose the interest to the word and because they never grasp or they never acquired the word meaning. Okay. So that's why when a regression happens, it's more like they lost an interest in something. And usually it's the sound, the word, or the activity that the word is used inside. That's why usually. And we're still guessing about the regression stuff. There are studies talking about how the wiring of a brain changes when there's clicks. This regression happens. I have no idea. I'm no expert in neurodivergent studies or whatever. I'm just a person who teaches parents how to teach the children to communicate better. But this regression is also something that you need to look out for. If it is autism, usually speaking, there isn't any other disorder out there that would cause this. Okay, so if this regression does happen, then yeah, it probably is autism. So you have to be careful there. Okay, Number five, what I wanted to talk about was also interests. So children on the spectrum have very narrow interests. Okay. And this is very hard to discern because a lot of times children who are typically developing would also line up toys. They would also look at spinning wheels. But there is, from my experience at least there's a marked difference between the interests. Can you interest a child into checking out something with you? So that's why joint attention or the ability to care about what others are doing in a close or far away proximity is a symptom of autism. And the reason is because if I can get a child to, to sell an idea, to sell a toy, to talk about something, to show something, and the child has an, an interest, or he actually just wants to go in and try out, then I would say, at least on the four, I think there's four or five verticals or criteria of autism, at least on the social level or the play level, he's actually doing okay. That's what I'm thinking. And I don't really need to, like, go in and do more intervention about that. All right. That's how the therapist brain works. Okay. So I will look at the interests and see how can this child or your child take new ideas, toys and interests. If it's hard and difficult and they're stubborn, it's going to be a little bit riskier. That probably is something to do with autism, right? And then the next thing is very huge is sensory issues, sensory needs. Children who are on a spectrum, they tend to have a lot more sensory needs. Okay, why we're talking about this is because we call it neurodivergent, right? So the typical neurotypical brain. And we all have different sensory profiles, by the way. It's just that it's still rather within normal limits if we take everyone's averages. But then for a neurodivergent person, the sensory profiles can be totally different from. From us. Right, so let's say that I had a child. No, I didn't have a child. I had a student who would be very sensitive to the echoes inside of the bathroom. So then we were thinking about why we couldn't get him to toilet train him, right? Why would he scream and shout and get angry? Because the more he screamed, the more echo he got and the more annoyed he was. And he was three at that time. So what we did was that, okay, so what would we do? We gave him ear defenders inside of just mufflers inside of the toilet. It worked. So then we could finally get him to go to the toilet. And then we reduced that ear defender, like cut holes and stuff, so that more sound would go in. More sound would go in. Right? Until we faded out and didn't have anything left. And he slowly got used to it. Now, a lot of people would say, oh, these sensory issues are like, we need to cater to the sensory needs. But that's a very. It's not very like a helpful mentality from a therapy perspective, from a teacher's perspective, what we want to do is do, okay, this is how much you can endure. Can we give, can we accommodate? And then I'll train you to endure more. Because in the real world, when we're not around the child, your child, the person who is on the spectrum will have to cope with this themselves. So we're giving them a framework. If you can't endure such a sensory again, it's the same as me. Later on today, I'm going to go, I'm going to bring some earplugs just in case, right? Because I Also, like when it gets really loud, my eardrums shake. So it's actually awful for me. I do understand that sensory profiles are different because I am heightened in sensory of smell and also in sound and noises. To make it a pleasant experience, I have to help myself cope and endure as well. So these sensory issues, everyone has it. But then for autistic individuals, it's very hard to know how the profiles are. Okay. It could be very extreme. They could feel nothing. I had a client who felt no pain on the spectrum. Like, she would drill and her skin pinch herself and she would feel nothing. She would hit her head, she would feel nothing. But then if you put a band aid on her, she feels it and she hates the stickiness for some reason. So you never know. You have to really, this is the case, you see like a very extreme sensory issues and needs and profile. Then, yeah, I think you need to think more about, okay, this child might be really on the spectrum. And then the last thing I want to talk about is symptoms versus the cause. So remember in the beginning I said, oh, hearing loss or just ear infections in general will actually create similar symptoms as autism. So this happens a lot of times. Autistic features, autistic symptoms, suspected autism stems from other developmental issues that share the same symptoms. Right. So hearing loss is one of them. Yeah. Another one might be like sensory issues, might be another one, like non autistic sensory issues, might be another one. Right. You might have other speech disorders that have the same issue. Right. It could be just a good old speech and language delay. It could also share the same symptoms. It could be a cognitive disorder that could also be a problem. It could be a cleft palate, that something structural that's affecting how the child was listening, talking. That would also cause an issue. Right. There's a lot going on and I've seen it many times because. And I say many times because our population is skewed because people who look for me are usually parents who are already asking for other solutions. Right. So then there's this boy in Ireland, and for a very long time I thought, oh, maybe he's, he's ADHD probably, right. And I somehow was got that right without doing the diagnosis. I don't really care to be correct, by the way. But then the pediatricians in Ireland, the teachers wanted to put him on the spectrum, and of which I thought it was really not appropriate. So then what happened was that by the time it was like three years in working with him over the Internet, the mom finally found out there was A problem with the audiology report and that his hearing was basically cleared, but it wasn't clear he had hearing loss. And that's why when he first came to us, he had a speech issue. He got some of the sounds wrong, especially the high frequency sounds. Those ones he couldn't really distinguish between. And the reason was because of his hearing loss, he had a middle ear infection that has been pervasive. So it's been coming on and off, on and off. No one knew what the heck was going on. And then when we finally cleared it, I think he still needs time to adjust and stuff. So his behaviors, symptoms are still there, but it's getting better and better. So then these, because of his hearing loss, the symptoms that create what were created made people think that he was on the spectrum. So you have to separate between symptoms and the cause. So a very good analogy is if I have a headache, that's a symptom, I could have a lot of causes. It could be just a migraine, it could be coffee withdrawal that I was dealing with a few days ago. It could be something a lot more serious like a tumor, right? That you just never know. So then when you have a symptom, don't already go to, oh, this is because of whatever, and you have to do more digging. And this is what the whole video is about. You have to dig more, right? You have to do more intervention. Because a lot of times what we call dynamic assessment is we don't just put a child into a room for an extended period of time for two hours, and then we do a thing and then we're like, oh, this is a child bait. We don't do that. A lot of psychologists do that because they don't have enough time because there's a huge waiting list. But if we had all the time in the world, we do a lot of dynamic assessment. Dynamic meaning we're intervening, we're teaching stuff and we're also assessing at the same time. And then to see if they can actually take the treatment. And they're like, oh, when I teach this, do they understand that? Then that's fine. If I'm introducing something of interest, right? Do they pick onto it? Do they start learn the words associated with that new interest? Right, so these are the good dynamic assessments that we can do. So you can do it yourself if you're a parent, because all you need to do is just teach yourself more about how to do home therapy. And you can do that@ww.agents of speech.com course. Okay, the link is in the description below. You can type it out on a browser. We have so many courses but to start off with I would always recommend you go through a micro course that is the first course inside of all the free stuff that we have and it just goes through all the frequently asked questions practically like some parents are like oh, you're reading my mind. I was thinking about this question. It's because I've answered it more than like a thousand times already. So that's why I made it into a course so that you can digest it and learn it and then ask better questions inside of our community which is included in the courses. We have 14,000 parents online in that community. Most of them are veteran parents who have gongu a bunch of their read have done taught themselves something and if you ask a question they'll answer you. Okay, so that's all for this video. If you're interested, click onto this video and learn more.