I wish him well. Good thoughts for your grandson.

My nephew is autistic, but I'm no expert. He's a wonderful boy though. Someone here has an autistic teenager. I'm sure there us someone other than me that can give you better information. I think, based on your description, it sounds likely. My nephew was diagnosed before he was two. My friends nephew was just diagnosed and he's not quite two.
Getting an official diagnosis was the best thing. They qualified for special education/therapy, and respite care. He's 13 1/2 now.

Best of luck to you and your family.

I teach children his age, and I've had several students that had varying degrees of autism.

The sooner he can be evaluated, the better.

Its not unusual for kids that age not to know colors and letters. Many have speech problems, especially boys.

However, when you say he doesn't respond when spoken to and seems to be in his own world, that would be cause for concern.

Whatever the problem, there are many effective methods and strategies to help youngsters -- I wish you all the best.

It could be he cannot hear. We are going thru that with one of my relatives now. We knew very early, before age one he could not hear, but the dr. disagreed with us. Once they put tubes in and cleared up a very serious sinus infection, he hears fine now. But there are other issues and I am so thankful, that they are having him tested. He is in a excellent head start program that is working with him. I too wish you the best. Just curious, why did the Mom and medical staff wait so long. My relative is 4 and with all sorts of help from the school and mom and dad and even younger sister, he knows his colors, he loves trucks and they are teaching him sign language and he is learning to speak a bit. There is a correlation between sign language and speech, not sure what, but it is working.

My Cuz just went to a weekend Seminar on Autism. She said she learned some very useful Techniques for teaching her 2 year old. Education for Parents is the best tool.

My DIL is the autism specialist for our area and she is brilliant at spotting and evaluating these children...granson is 20 year old with autism and he has made AMAZING strides in his development, as have so many that she has helped find treatment and therapy. The key is early intervention and therapy.. An involved parent, and a caring school system and education are also primary needs. The number of children being diagnosed these days is almost 1 in every 100. Very alarming! But the good news is, the children are being helped!

DISCLAIMER: Be advised that these statements are the views of one person who is NOT an expert in the field of child behavior. These are opinions only.

Autism is tough to deal with. I've been though this myself with my first born. Back when he came down with the 'troubles', not as much was known about autism and related diseases. We now beleive that he was mis-labeled because he did finally improve, and true autistics are not supposed to get better according to the profession, but now they find that it is not all black and white, but many shades of gray. There is no set formula for diagnosis. For this reason, doctors are reluctant to hang the label "autistic" too early on a child. And for these reason, early diagnosis is difficult.

I can only offer clues based on my experience:

1. Infants will seek out an adult's face when they are nursing. In the first month or so, it is the mother's face because this is the one in focus. (Infants are born near sighted; focusing at a distance develops in the first few months.) After a month or more, a babe may look at the father or another adult when he is nursing. It will the face he can easily see while nursing. Anthropologists say this may be an inborn trait. A babe is most vulnerable when feeding and watches the face of a protective adult for signs of distress or danger.

This trait is missing with autism.

2. The second trait is that many babies like to hear their parent hum a tune to relax them and help to settle down for a sleep. The autisitc babe bristles at any such attempt. However, if you have ever heard me hum a lulaby, you might bristle too, so I can not declare this trait as a proof.

3. The fear of heights and/or danger is missing. An example was if I was walking with my son in my arms and passed a stairwell, he'd lunge for the open stairwell.

4. The most telling trait happens at about 18 months when speech is developing. The child will begin to parrot several words, but in a few days, a new word will begin to be slurred and in a few days, it will become unintelligble. As the malady progresses, the time shortens from saying a new word to shoveling it into meaningless sounds.

The time of frustration begins for both the parent and child. The child grunts a phrase and expects the parent to understand, and the parent becomes baffled bordering on the verge of anger. Both child and parent become angry internally. This is the period that requires great patience from the parent. This the period when the parent-child relationship can be damaged.

There are other traits of autism that show when the disease is fully developed and these are fully described in the literature. Typical behaviors are 'twiddling', obsession with a repeated action, staring at an inanimate object, etc. I recommend that you toss out literature about popular ideas written from 1940 to maybe 1975. There was a turn-about in ideas at the end of this period therefore later findings were more helpful and accurate than the first publication. The first clinical diagnosis was based on a study of too few subjects and the subjects were not representative of the cross section of our population. It was a very skewed population of few affected children. A failed relationship between mother and child was blamed, and as a result, many mothers were wrongly blamed. This worsened the situation and tore families apart. Sadly, some mothers eventually were pushed into believeing they were 'bad'. There could have been a bad apple here and there, but that was a very small percentage. Because of this, I recommed that you stick with literature generated in the last 30 years and be aware that old ideas, particularily ideas saturated with finding blame, dies hard. Those old idea tended to color literature for a long after it was declared void.

DISCLAIMER: Be advised that these statements are the views of one person who is NOT an expert in the field of child behavior. These are opinions only.

Bulldinkie- I'm not an expert either but I've seen first hand the remarkable progress autistic children can make when they receive the right therapy. Parental involvement is key - the parents must become vocal advocates for their child.

a side note to jemdandy- Your post was very interesting. How refreshing though to read your disclaimer. So often I read these posts and cringe at some of the advice given here by people who think they know it all.

It's a difficult situation for parents to find themselves in. I'll be thinking about your grandson and hoping for the best.

One of children, now 24, was diagnosed many years ago before we knew much about autism and how to deal with it. She still struggles at times but we are proud of how far she has come. I also work with children who have special needs in a pre-school and we see more and more children entering with "needs".
I too an no expert and can only offer my opinion and wishes for your grandson to get assessed and have intervention if needed, as soon as possible. That truly is key when dealing with all types of disabilities.
I also agree whole heartedly with maire_cate...strong parental involvement, education and advocacy is critical in dealing with children with special needs. Too often they slip through cracks if parents aren't on top of things.

bulldinkie: One of my medical specialists has 4 of 7 children that are moderately Autistic(sp) and 3 have educations and professions. The one is in a "Group community" especially for Autistic Adults, that will teach him and supervise him the rest of his life. The Dr.'s wife tells me there is some wonderful web sites and forums for the parents of Autistic children. She also assures me that the amount of progress she has seen in other Autistic children is exactly tied to the amount of parent and family involvement.

I'm sure it will be some help to know what you are dealing with for sure and have caring people to help direct your family, no matter what the child's situation is. L.marie

My 8 yr old grandson is autistic. As a baby he didn't look at you when you said his name, didn't respond to you talking to him, it was as if you were a ghost in the room. He doesn't talk much now but can say a word or so to ask for something.
He's been going to therapy since he was about 2 1/2 and has made great strides but still does not interact or play with others a lot. He does maintain eye contact, if you saw him before therapy you would see the huge improvement.
I'm glad you're having your grandson checked out, then you will know what to do next...

We have 4 grandkids close in age 5,4,3,2.Hes the 4 year old and a boy.On Labor day they were here for a picnic I said something to him I must have said it 6 times he was close enough to touch.He didnt hear me.The mother was sitting there she says Trever ,Grandmas talking to you he stopped looked at me, he heard me then.
He seems like he cant play normal,hes destructive,Out of the five he seems like hes not satisfied without picking on the others.He was just here they were all sitting,he got up went over to the one girl on the rocking chair and was trying to upset the rocker with her on it,its an adult rocker
My husband goes gets all 4 and takes them around the farm doing things ,seeing the animals etc.They love that.I said to him one nite does he seem to do odd things with you he said yes ,He seems to be in another world.My daughter saw it too.
Just Friday my daughter kept him and his 2 year old sister.They were sitting on the couch,I looked over ,they were eating goldfish crackers his face looked like he was lost kinda went to the side up to the corner of the room,it was strange.Only for like a second.Sometimes he shakes like he has chills.
He talks you cant understand him at all. the mom always says yes instead of trying to correct him.
She told my daughter shes scared of the results.
Thanks everybody for your input well wait see what they say,

Bulldinkie, even if your GS's hearing has been tested and OK'd before, I hope they have it tested again. My DH somehow put bb's in his ear around age 3 and slowly became deaf in that ear as the ear wax built up around the bb's for the next 13 years. No one knew what he'd done and his mother would take him to doctors but none could do anything about it. An X-ray would have done the trick, but it wouldn't be the first thing anyone thought of, I suppose.

Anyway, when he was 16, they tried a new doctor who put some very strong solution in the ear. It melted the wax and the bb's came out several hours later. DH and his parents were astonished and his mom told me that he went from being a very quiet, shy child to a very outgoing and happy young man. His personality just blossomed.

To make a short story long, I just want to say that it may be that your GS's hearing is somehow impaired. I wish you and your family the best.

I had several children in my kindergarten classes with varying degrees of autism. One was very verbal - actually learned to read in kindergarten but math and fine motor skills were non existent. Being able to focus to complete tasks was not possible for him. He also had certain things that bothered him that would not be of concern to other kids. He didn't like anyone walking behind him, didn't like overhangs of buildings and became fearful of beads - the kind used at Christmas as decorations, jewerly, just about anything that resembled them. He feared someone would choke on them.

The other child had more difficulty not only with socialization but also academically across the board. He would repeat what people said to him instead of answering them, had tactile issues, would rub his face against rough surfaces, would physically hit himself over and over again.

There are all spectrums of Autism from Aspergers to the severe. Some do well with assistance in school, can be mainstreamed into the regular classroom, others need self-contained classrooms. I would make sure to eliminate the hearing issue first. A young child does not necessarily know that he/she has lost some or all of his hearing, especially if it is gradual. Hopefully you will get good news. If not, make sure to get him in school with help for both learing and socialization. The law requires that the child's needs be met.