I Suspected Autism in My Toddler – Then I Wondered If I Was Wrong
The thought first came to me in the parking lot outside the little gym where my son, Leo, had just finished his “mommy and me” class. I was unbuckling him from his car seat, and he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at his hands, moving his fingers around the light from the window, almost like he was studying them. I said his name, twice, and he didn’t respond. Other parents were walking past, their kids chatting or crying or pointing. Leo just kept moving his fingers.
“Hey, buddy, we’re going home,” I said, a little too loudly. He didn’t even flinch.
That night, I stayed up too late googling. I know, I know. The internet is a monster. But I didn’t search “autism symptoms” right away. I searched something softer: “toddler not responding to name.” Then I clicked into a forum where a mother described her son’s play exactly like Leo’s—lining up trucks by color, ignoring trains that actually moved. And I felt that cold wash of recognition.
For the next two weeks, I watched Leo like a detective. I noticed things I hadn’t seen before. He stacked blocks in perfect rows, and when I knocked them over, he didn’t cry—he just rebuilt them. He had a dozen words, maybe more, but he rarely used them to ask for anything. Mostly he said “go go go” when he wanted the door open, or hummed while pushing a single car across the rug for twenty minutes. I made a mental list. I told my husband, Jason, who watched him for about ten minutes and said, “He’s fine. He just has a different personality.”
Then the doubt started creeping in. Because once you suspect something, everything looks like evidence. The way Leo spun the wheels on a toy for a long time? Sign. The way he didn’t point at things he wanted? Maybe. The way he didn’t cry at loud noises? Could be. But also—he made eye contact with me across the room. He laughed when I tickled him. He leaned his head on my shoulder when he was tired. Was I twisting all of that to fit a diagnosis I barely understood? I thought, maybe I’m not a careful observer. Maybe I’m an anxious mother who read one article and lost her mind.
The real turning point came at Leo’s two-year checkup. The pediatrician, a calm older woman I trusted, asked the usual questions. “How many words does he say?” I said “about twenty.” She nodded. “Does he point?” I hesitated, then said “sometimes. Not really.” And then she asked, “Are you worried about anything?” I froze. I wanted to say, “I think he might be autistic.” But I heard my mother-in-law’s voice in my head: “Boys are just slower. Don’t label him.”
Instead, I said, “I’m not sure.” And she looked at me with an expression I’ve come to know well—patient, neutral, waiting. So I told her about the parking lot. About the finger-watching. About the gate he didn’t walk through when I called him. She didn’t gasp. She asked a few more questions, then said: “He’s right on the edge of the typical range for his age. Some of these things could be normal. Some are worth keeping an eye on. I don’t think we need to panic, but I don’t think we should ignore it either.”
That was the first time I felt a little lighter. Because she wasn’t telling me I was wrong, and she wasn’t telling me I was right. She was just… watching. She gave me a checklist of milestones to track over the next three months. Not a diagnostic sheet—just a simple list: responds to name, points at objects, shows you things, waves, uses gestures, tries to copy sounds. She said, “Don’t rely on your memory. Write down when you see these things, and when you don’t.”
I’m a reasonable adult, but I had never thought of that. I had been spinning in my head, replaying every interaction, trying to make my own observations fit or not fit. Writing it down changed everything.
So I started keeping a little notebook in my purse. Every time Leo pointed at the dog, I wrote “pointed at dog.” Every time he didn’t turn when I called his name from the kitchen, I wrote “no response to name by chair.” Within a week, a clearer picture emerged. It wasn’t the dramatic, all-or-nothing stuff I’d been looking for. It was small patterns. He responded to his name about half the time, but only when I was next to him. He pointed at objects maybe twice a week, usually things he wanted, never just to share an interest. He loved stickers, but he never brought one to me. He was happy, engaged with me, but only on his own terms.
But here’s the funny thing: after I started writing it down, the doubt got worse again. Because now I had data. And data has a cold, unforgiving quality. I would look at my notebook and think, “This is clearly not normal.” Then I’d put it away and watch Leo play with a cardboard box, making babbling sounds, smiling at me, and think, “He’s fine. Look at him. He’s talking. He’s happy.” The two thoughts kept washing over each other like tides.
I remember a conversation with a friend who has a son the same age. She said, “Max doesn’t like being called from another room either. It’s just boys.” And I wanted to believe her. I really did. But then the next day, Leo and I were at the park, and there was a group of three kids his age. One boy pointed at a squirrel and looked at his mom. Another girl said “mama, look” while holding up a rock. Leo was sitting in the sand, filling a bucket, not looking at anyone. He didn’t even look at the squirrel when I pointed at it and made a big deal.
That moment was gut-wrenching, because I realized I wasn’t imagining it. The difference was there, in front of me. But that still didn’t answer the question: was it autism, or was it just him? The pediatrician had said not to Google, but I googled anyway. And I found enough stories about late talkers who turned out fine, and other stories about bright toddlers with autism who were diagnosed later, and none of it helped.
What helped, eventually, was a practical exercise a speech therapist suggested when I finally made an appointment for an evaluation. She wasn’t authorized to diagnose, but she watched Leo for twenty minutes and gave me a phrase I’ve repeated a hundred times since. “The question isn’t whether your child is autistic,” she said. “The question is: what is your child telling you through his behaviour, and what does he need to communicate better?”
At first, that felt like a dodge. But then I started using it. Instead of asking, “Is he autistic?” I asked, “What is he trying to say when he pulls my hand toward the fridge?” Instead of worrying about the diagnosis, I worried about what I could do that afternoon. The speech therapist taught me to slow down and wait longer after asking a question, to hold up two objects and watch where his eyes went, to narrate what he was doing with short phrases like “red car goes down the ramp.”
And something shifted. I wasn’t watching for symptoms anymore. I was watching for communication. I started to notice how Leo did connect with me—just differently. When he wanted to be picked up, he stood near my feet and pulled at my pant leg, but didn’t raise his arms. When he was excited, he squeezed his fists and bounced, but didn’t point at whatever excited him. When he wanted more crackers, he looked at the box and said “buh,” then looked at me, then back at the box. He was trying. He was telling me. He just wasn’t using the typical route.
That phrase, “typical route,” changed things. I stopped comparing Leo to the kid at the park who pointed at the squirrel. I started comparing Leo to Leo from last month. And that comparison felt more grounded. He had added a few new sounds. He was looking at me when he said “buh” now, not just staring at the box. The notebook helped with this too. Every time I wrote something down, I could look back the following week and see tiny movements forward. They weren’t leaps. But they were steps.
The evaluation is still pending. There’s a waiting list, and we’re supposed to get a call in early spring. Some mornings I wake up and I’m sure Leo is on the spectrum. His sensory quirks, the delayed pointing, the way he gets hyper around any spinning object—it all lines up. Other mornings, he yells “mama” from his crib, and I bring him into bed, and he wraps his arms around my neck and says “up, up” perfectly, and I think, “How could anything be wrong?”
I don’t have an answer yet. And I’m learning to be okay with that. The process of suspecting autism has taught me something unexpected: I didn’t need certainty to act. I needed to observe, to record, to respond, and to thank the people who treated my worry as information rather than hysteria. The pediatrician didn’t dismiss me. The speech therapist didn’t demand a label. They both gave me tools to understand Leo better, whether or not he ever receives a diagnosis.
Last week, we were sitting on the floor in his room. He was lining up his trucks again, but this time he took one—a red one—and drove it toward my leg. He looked at me and said, “Beep.” I made a silly sound, and he laughed. Then he did it again. And for a moment, I wasn’t trying to figure out anything. I was just playing with my son. Maybe that’s where all the watching and worrying was supposed to lead. Not to a verdict, but to this: showing up, paying attention, and leaving room for being wrong about being wrong.
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