I often get messages asking me questions… How did you know he had autism? What was he doing that worried you? What were the early signs of autism when he was a baby? I was part of an online mom group who all had babies born in the Spring of 2013. Our babies were close in age so it was fun to follow everyone’s development. Every Sunday we had a “Brag Thread” in which every mom commented something new their children started doing that week. Week after week I read that thread without having anything to contribute. At first I wasn’t too worried because all children develop at their own pace and also because Charlie was exposed to two languages in the home (French and English), which we used to excuse his slow progress with speech. Early Signs of Autism Around 20 months in I started questioning if something more was going on. Not only Charlie wasn’t progressing but he was regressing, and that was the biggest red flag. He had a dozen of words and he lost them starting around 18 months. So, a friend of mine recommended we spend about 15 minutes taking the M-CHAT questionnaire, an autism screening tool for children between 15 … Continue reading Early Signs of Autism in Babies and Toddlers