Jayven is 4 almost 5. He likes characters of all kinds mostly Disney/ Pixar characters. There hasn’t been one Pixar movie he hasn’t loved. I suspect it’s because those movies really know how to make you feel!
We suspected he had autism around 18 months old when we noticed the few words he had developed, vanished. Really at that time that was the only red flag. He did go through a period where he was banging his head on most surfaces but we suspected it was due to him being unable to communicate. We sought out early intervention at the age of 2 and got him into speech therapy. During speech therapy, more signs started to develop that our speech pathologist advised us to keep an eye on. Such as tip toe walking, lining up toys instead of playing with them as intended, repeating the same activity over and over, such as walking the same path over and over, or rolling a pen up an incline to watch it roll down, over, and over.
We first had him evaluated at 2.5 years and they said he doesn’t have autism; he just has ADHD. We were very confused because the entire time during the eval, he sat on our lap. For 2 hours. Definitely not something a kiddo with ADHD would do. So we decided to get him evaluated again, this time at UDAC. At that time he was 2 years and 10 months. He was still not talking very much and didn’t have many more signs other than the ones before. The pediatrician evaluating him couldn’t be clear. So she recommended we have him evaluated by a psychologist. Then he turned 3 and it was like the floodgates for signs rushed in. Hand flapping, sensory issues, transition issues, tantrums, limited diet. Basically, he turned into the poster child for autism, all signs he never showed before. We got into the psychologist at 3 years and 3 months and he was diagnosed. He has since been successful in pre-school where he received speech therapy and is enrolled in ABA therapy.
