Late-Onset Autism: When Your Child Regresses
Some children with autism show signs of autism early-on, and catching missed developmental milestones are a good way to start effective intervention as early as possible. The earlier diagnosis can happen the better, so appropriate learning can take place while your little one’s brain is soaking up information like a sponge.
For other children like our son, autism doesn’t seem to strike until later, and many of them experience cycles of regression and recoupment. Doctors suspect different underlying causes when regression happens later than 2 years of age. Our son’s autism specialist and developmental pediatrician both suggested that we look into what they considered the three main causes of late-onset autism and cycles of regression: seizure activity, metabolic disorders, or mental retardation.
What does the initial regression of late-onset autism look like?
With late-onset autism, many children experience either a sudden or gradual loss of skills such as speech, social, cognitive, and fine or large motor skills after typical development in those areas, usually after 2 years of age.
In our case, our son developed typically, other than two tell-tale developmental milestones: pointing, and bringing objects to show an adult. Otherwise, he engaged socially, surpassed physical milestones early, and even had average vocabulary development.
Our other children were early talkers, and when my son did not have the vocabulary explosion I was used to seeing between 18 and 24 months, I started asking other parents, and even brought it up at his two-year checkup. He was our first boy, and everyone assured me that boys often taken longer to talk, so I just waited.
Shortly after my son turned two, I noticed he wasn’t using some of the 30 words and phrases he used to. Within a couple of months, Jack had lost all but two phrases, “Jack all done” and “Jack ready to get down.”
Along with this loss of speech, he had developed a rash around his mouth, and over the next 5 months we watched our happy, easy-going son turn somber and withdrawn. He was still content, in fact, he seemed not to care about anything. Prefering to sit in the corner and stare out the window than engage in a game of tackle with Daddy seemed like an odd choice for a toddler. We called it his “toddler depression,” and did our best to pull him into activities we thought he would enjoy, usually without success.
He stopped playing with toys and instead prefered to hold shiny, metal kitchen utensils. He’d never been a thumb or passifier sucker and hardly ever put anything in his mouth as an infant, but now he started mouthing things like metal utensils, sticks, and even rocks.
If he needed food or water, he would usually try to get it himself. If that failed, and he was really hungery or thirsty, he would grab us by the finger and pull us toward the kitchen, but never asked, whined, or pointed to indicate specifically what he wanted. Just stood there in front of the fridge or cupboard and waited.
Jack slid deeper and withdrew more and more from us. He seemed completely unaware of where we were or when we left the room. He would wander away aimlessly from us without any concern. He avoided making eye contact with us. He seemed to be spending more and more time in his own little world.
When he started avoiding physical touch, hugs, and holding our hands, I was alarmed and determined that he would stay connected and maintain at least that basic relational need: physical touch. We had no formal diagnosis of autism or any other disorder, but we knew this disconnect was not normal, and was definitely not okay.
We were determined to pull our son back into our world any way we could. The next article describes our efforts to reverse this withdrawn, disconnected state in our son through re-bonding strategies.
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