Andre's brush with autism

I realise that there are some parents who worry about whether their children have developmental disorders, so I wanted to share my experiences with Andre.
As a toddler, Andre was always happy and bubbly, though rather timid. In terms of physical development, he was right on schedule - walked at 12 months, ran at 14 months. However, in terms of speech, he was worryingly slow. By age 2½, he could only say a sprinkling of words like "car", "ball" and "no" (which is more typical of a 1½-year-old). He only called me "Mummy" for the first time close to his 3rd birthday.

We brought him to a speech therapist but the evaluation was inconclusive as he was too young. Interestingly, as his vocabulary slowly grew, at first it almost entirely evolved around vehicles - something he's crazy about. "Red truck", "big bus", "train", "crane" and his favourite "dig dig sand" (this was his name for the digger). In fact, every time we drove by a construction site, he would get all excited and exclaim, "Many many dig dig sand!" This was past his third birthday. (For a long time, his ambition was to be a truck driver, by the way).

Then we grew more concerned when we read up on autism and we realised that he had many of the symptoms, such as delay in speech, inability to relate to what is "realistic" and what is not, and constant repetitive behaviour. Eg. he would zip around on his tricyle or little car round and round exactly the same spot in the living room for long periods at a time.

Another symptom of autism that Andre manifested was an unusual focus on parts of toys rather than the whole toy. I had come across a pamphlet on autism which said that one thing austistic kids like to do is to spin the wheels of a bike and stare at it. Reading this gave me a big jolt as that was EXACTLY what Andre would do. He would turn his sister's bike upside down, spin the front wheel and watch it. Over and over and over again.

Andre loves cars. But instead of making the cars move or park or do other car-like motions in make believe play, he would just line them up in rows, sometimes straight, sometimes in circles (like in right pic). Once he had used up all his cars, he would remove the first car and start another row. He never actually "played" with them. And when he was lining up his cars, nobody could touch them or mess up the rows, that would trigger a screaming fit of anger and frustration.

When we eventually brought him to a child therapist for an assessment, she explained that this was apparently some sort of social deficiency in play. Since play is a way for children to re-create their social construct of the world, how they play is very revealing. In the therapist's room were a variety of toys, which she encouraged Andre to play with. He was drawn to a large dollhouse with many pieces of furniture. But instead of playing with the furniture, he took them all out and started lining them up in rows, like what he did with cars at home. The order was random, ie he didn't care whether it was a bed or a table or a lamp, he was only interested in forming patterns with them.

We only went back to the therapist for a couple of sessions. Like the earlier speech therapist, she couldn't confirm any diagnosis. But I guess since that was her rice bowl, she tried to make it sound like Andre needed to go for regular therapy to iron out his kinks. We just didn't buy it, I mean there must be 1001 different ways in which children develop, right? By then, Andre was making progress in his speech (albeit slowly), so we decided to take a step back, monitor his situation on our own and not be so quick to label him.

We know now that was the right decision. Andre is now a cheeky, well-adjusted 8-year-old who CAN'T STOP TALKING. He still enjoys arranging his toys (this pic on the left was taken when he was 4 years old) but he has also naturally learnt how to play in a social manner, without any therapy or rigid enforcement by his parents (imagine being told, "you have to play like this!")

Of course hindsight is 20/20. I'm not suggesting that all children be left to develop on their own. If your child does have autism, ADHD or other developmental disorders, early intervention is preferable. I know a child who was clearly autistic but whose parents were in denial and refused to admit he had a disorder. He was brought for an assessment only years later and confirmed to be autistic, wasting precious time that could have been constructively spent managing the condition. If you suspect something is wrong, I don't see any harm in getting a professional assessment, although if your child is too young, the tests are often inconclusive.

All I'm saying is that more often than not, what we think might be symptoms of a disorder are just the quirks in our children developing in their own way. So keep an open mind but don't be too quick to jump to conclusions. Child psychologists agree that the spectrum of child development is so vast and varied that it's impossible to mention every possible scenario. Such is the uniqueness of human beings.