Early Autistic Childhood Development

When K was first born and was still in hospital there were several signs that he was different from others though at the time we had no idea what that difference was.

Firstly, he was very lacklustre and reluctant to take to the breast to be fed. This of course led to it's own problems with him having to remain in hospital care for longer and him having to be fed via a tube down his throat. We were on constant watch as he lay in his humidi crib. During this time we found in his nappy on more than one occasion blood after he had emptied his bowels. This was extremely worrying when the doctors were unable to enlighten us as to why this was happening.

Once our precious little man arrived home we discovered he was very different to his brothers. Firstly, he would tire very easily when feeding. Thus he was putting on insufficient weight and was constantly having to be woken to try and finish feeding.

During this period he was also very restless and cried a lot. Probably from being continuously hungry we presumed given his sleeping during feeding tendencies.

As he grew older a few things became very apparent:

* We could not get him to sit upright at all;
* He never crawled but made what became known as a seal movement. Basically worming his way across the floor;
* He learnt to walk very late;
* He developed very little speech;
* He showed very little concentration for anything we tried to do with him;
* Any effort to feed him anything but breast milk was basically a waste of time;

At the age of 3 he contracted a very serious case of gastric. It took a lot out of him physically but most disturbing to us was that he basically laid on the lounge and waited for it to happen. Not once did he tell us he needed to go to the toilet. He just continuously dirtied his jocks. Added to this was his refusal to lift his head and take a drink of any kind. Thus he became very dehydrated and lost a good deal of weight.

At the time it was very worrying but as we know now he probably had absolutely no idea what was happening to him and we were obviously unable to communicate with him to alleviate his uncertainty.

None of these factors would be definitive in determining Autism but what it does do is enable us to look back on it and least now understand what was happening with him in these less than perfect times.

Let's Talk About Autism!!