Expert: Valerie Herskowitz - 12/17/2010

Question
My son is exactly 14 months today and I have some concerns. Not Vaccinated. Only received the two HpB shots and we opted for a later start. I am a stay at home mom so the baby is mostly with me and a few adults not children his age unless we go to park. Earlier this month I contacted the Early intervention program to come and evaluate my son and they did. he is not eligible for the program and they did see some delays in communication, however, they gave us some tips like limit the amount of tv, read more, hands on play, etc.. They felt that he was ok however if we seen a regression or no progess in 4-6 months to call them back.

So here this what keeps my concerns looming..

Positives:
-crawled/walked on time
-loves to play peek a boo and laugh
-smiles when we smile
-reacts to the emotions from me and husband
-used to shake his head when we said NO now he claps (don't know why)
-mimics expressions or at least tries too
-is attached to mother but will eventually warm up to others after a few minutes
-babbles..mostly ma ma ma and dada occassionally.. of all words he will say is elephant: e- wa wa
Concerns:
-husbands nephew is autistic
-tilting his head to observe something since about 7 months and has not stopped. Specially lights,stroller wheels, fans, water faucet drops. Not for long periods cause I will stop him.
-does not point. will make a reference by reaching for it or crying for it.
-does wave bye bye but not all the time.. He will look at his hand or wave bye bye but backwards
-likes to look at his hands/fingers
-puts the donuts on the cone and puts toy in the bucket but we had to keep doing it with him to eventually catch on but not its more of a repetitive thing if its out there to play with it.
-take him to the park and he will go towards the stroller wheels.

I try to read on the internet of other peoples experiences and concerns and although the EI team didnt see any alarming issues I guess I wont feel ok until he really progresses and I am at ease.Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Answer
I'm not seeing anything alarming either other than the language delay, so focus on improving the speech communication -in other words, get him to a speech pathologist as this is one area that you know for a fact is delayed. Then time will tell if he seems to have other issues. I'm not saying that there isn't anything going on-but just not something that is screaming AUTISM if you know what I mean.

But there is distinctive speech delay. He should be saying words now on a regular basis. Sometimes children who are related to an autistic person will be language delayed. So get him speech therapy and then we will see what happens in the future with the other behaviors.