at what age did your child with autism sit/crawl/walk etc?

My son has Asperger's and his physical and verbal development were faster than average. He walked at 10 months and talked before he was a year old. His social and small motor development were always behind...even as an infant.

Try not to worry about your son. If you are really worried you can ask his pediatrician for an evaluation. He doesn't sound like he is all that far behind developmentally. Many children are slower in their physical development and turn out just fine.

As a person who works in a school, I shouldn't say this but I suggest that you go with Bob's answer. As for the raging debate about if Autism is an educational or a medical diagnosis, the answer is its both. If you want a medical or clinical diagnosis of autism, you should have a comprehensive (and muy expensive) evaluation done by a psychologist who specialzes in this area. The evaluation should not be a 10 minute waiting room eyeball of the child but a thorough evaluation (cognitive ability, sensory aspects, speech, language, behavior, adaptive behavior). The best evaluation would also include the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule which sets up social situations designed to elicit behaviors common to children with autism. If you want an educational eligibility, you could let the school do the evaluation. The chances are, it will not be as rigorous or thorough. Most school psychologists are not trained specifically in diagnosing autism (though there are some like me who are). The up-side is this evaluation would be free. Clinically, it sounds more like your son may have asperger's syndrome instead of the classic autism because his language is well developed. The criteria for that is that includes difficulty with social interaction and some type of repetitive behavior and restricted interest. Bottom line, I would let the school do the evaluation because it is free. It is likely they will eyeball your kid and use a few checklists. If you do not feel comfortable with that, then I would refuse to sign the IEP paperwork and insist that an independent evaluation be done (at the school's expense). Use the advocate as well.

My son has Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism. He was able to sit, walk, and talk within the norms of average and healthy babies. By the time he was five he had developed excellent verbal skills and had a large vocabulary - above average. (I read to him every day) when he was six (1994) he was diagnosed with Touretts, OCD, and ADD. (Asperger's Syndrome was not well known or understood by many in the field then.)

His muscle coordination, balance, proprioceptive feedback was less than average. Proprioceptive feedback has to do with the feedback the brain receives about the position and attitude of his body and limbs and balance - sometimes referred to as "Novocaine body." For example, if he was carrying small plate with a few cookies, he would be unaware of the position and attitude of his hand and tip the plate until the cookies slid off. In general, you might just think of him being clumsy. However, there are treatments that can improve proprioceptive feedback. We involved him in those treatments and he improved a great deal.

From an infant, he had quite a long attention span and could concentrate on things extremely well, and had a great memeory, too. He was more overfocused than average kids. He liked playing with kids, but often would end up involved in something that used all of his attention. We tried sports like soccer and T-ball, but he was the kid laying down in the outfield looking for bugs to examine. ;-)

As noted by Jayne, many children will develop at their own pace and a delay may not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong, my oldest child was slow to sit up, slow to walk, yet he has no disabilities.

It is important as well to discuss this with your ped and to monitor his progress especially with one child with an ASD in the family, there may be in home supports/therapies that may be available to you depending on where you reside. This is something you should discuss with your ped.

With one child on the spectrum, and another child with low muscle tone has anyone mentioned fragile X to you? Low muscle tone is quite common in fragile X. It is something you may want to rule out, it can be diagnosed by a simple blood test, FMR1 DNA test (note a chromosome analysis, or microarray analysis cannot be used to diagnose fragile X, often they produce false negatives.)

I've included the link to the Learn the signs, Act Early website, you may find this information helpful as well to judge if he's hitting the appropriate milestones in development.

Good luck and hugs.