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Autism/question regarding eye contact

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Expert: - 10/27/2010


Question
My son is will be 2 next week.  He has hit all his milestones and has passed the M-CHAT.  He is talking like a 3 year old (6-7 word sentences).  Loves to cuddle, and play with his big sister (age 5).
 I am highly aware of autism and maybe too much.  We have aspergers on my husbands side so I have watched him like a hawk.  The one thing that has me bothered is eye contact.  He makes incredible eye contact but it can get spotty up close.  If I am holding him he will make it but it seems to be brief and he looks away alot even if I ask him to look me in the eye.  So this has been driving me nuts.  He makes incredible eye contact from afar and I watch him interact with others with normal eye contact.  
 Thanks for your time I just know the statistics are high today and just want to know if I am just watching more than the average parent!

Answer
Hi Krystal,

I'm not a doctor or health care professional, and it's pretty much impossible to diagnose anyone over the internet from a few lines of text.

Having said that, how you describe your son doesn't really sound like autism to me, if the only thing you're worried about is spotty eye contact when he's up close (by the way, did he have an eye exam - probably trying to recognize/process/"see" your face up close is difficult or uncomfortable for him because he is far sighted or has some other kind of vision problem).

But anyway, if you want to be absolutely sure it's not autism, take your son to a specialist to have him evaluated.

Hope this helps,
C.

Autism

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*DISCLAIMER*

Please note I am not a healthcare professional or a doctor.
I cannot provide a diagnosis or give any medical advice.
Therefore I cannot answer questions like "is my child autistic ?" other than by telling you to go and see a specialist
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Please be aware that if you are in the US it will usually take at least 24 hours until I can answer your question, as I'm in Europe and don't have access to my email during the day. I also cannot answer questions concerning the US educational or law system (other than by looking up things on google, but that's probably not the expertise you need), as I'm not in the US.
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Please also be aware that I'm a person with autism. My answers may sometimes be very blunt and direct and I may tell you things you won't like to hear. Diplomacy is certainly not among my talents. I'm never being rude on purpose, and I always try not to hurt or offend people, but it has happened before and may happen again. It's NEVER on purpose. I just want to help.
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What I *can* do for you is gather information on any aspect of autism and therapy of autism you're interested in and give you my personal oppinion about it (if you want to hear it) or, if it applies, tell you about my personal experience. I can answer all questions about what life is like for an autistic person.

I can also answer questions asked in German or French (but will have to answer in English to questions asked in French as my French is a bit rusty).

Ich beantworte gerne auch Fragen auf Deutsch.

Vous pouvez poser des questions en Francais, si cela ne vous dérange pas que je responds en anglais.

Experience


As I'm not doing well right now and am not in the shape of answering questions well - I recieved a few low ratings lately - I'll take a break from AllExperts for the next few weeks/until I'm doing better

I am an adult diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism and ADD.

In the past years I have also read a lot about autism and its comorbid conditions and related subjects (as I am experiencing symptoms of most of these or know others who do) , so I have accumulated a lot of layman knowledge in this area (AD(H)D, Tourette's Syndrome, OCD, sleep disorders, allergies, sensory integration dysfunction, learning difficulties, left/right-brain, giftedness, Irlen Syndrome, prism glasses, executive dysfunction (aka. "inertia"), "special" diets).

Education/Credentials
None in the field of autism, apart from being autistic myself !

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