3 May 2008 - Concern on Autism

Jerlene is scheduled for MMR injection today. Our appointment is at 10am and as usual, by the time it reaches our turn, it's already 11 plus. Jerlene's growth is still on her own curve at about 25 percentile. So she's probably under the smaller build type. Her mobility development is also ok but there is one thing that the PD (Dr Lee) has a little concern. And that is Jerlene is ignoring people quite a bit. When we call her name, she will usually ignore it, which is what happened in the clinic. And because of this, I'm not even sure whether she knows who or what is papa and mama, although she can say it. Sometimes when we go out of the room, she will call papa and mama but there are also times when she looks at Tracy and call papa or even pointing at herself and call papa.

According to Dr Lee, ignoring her name and not able to differentiate papa and mama distinctively at month 15 may be a sign of autism. As such, she wants us to observe her more and see whether there is any improvement in the next visit in three months time. And because of this, Dr Lee suggested that we hold on to the MMR injection because in the recent years, there have been some debates saying that Autism could be caused by the MMR jab. So instead, Jerlene only took the chicken pox vaccination this time round. She did not cry at all from the jab because she's very easily distracted.

After this appointment, both Tracy and I are a bit concern and the moment we went home, we started researching on the topic of Autism. The more we read, the more fear we have because Jerlene has indeed shown quite a number of the signs for Autism. I'm a bit surprised by some of the symptoms that I read because I've always thought many babies/toddlers will like to do such things. For example, toe walking and repetitively doing the same thing may be symptoms of autism. Also, I've always thought that Autistic people usually do not like to socialize but according to the study, it is not true. In fact they like to socialize and make good friends but what they aim for is quality rather than quantity.

Looking at the below two pictures, I'll never thought they suffer from Autism.

To me they seems normal, in fact, I will think they are quite intelligent. According to study, repetitively stacking or lining up objects may indicate autism. Scary right.......I believe there could be many parents who do not know that their kids are suffering from Autism.

If you want to read more about Autism, click here.
And below is a video on How to spot signs of Autism.