12 Signs of Autism in Babies

My husband and I have five kids and our two youngest are autistic. And here are 12 signs that your baby may have autism. Our eight-year-old, Ezra, has level three autism. He is so fun. He communicates through an iPad and he's learning how to spell, which is really exciting. And he likes to spin with cords and play with cords and throw cords and put them around his hands and manipulate them. And since he has level three autism, we were able to see earlier in life his signs of autism, even when he was just three months old. Our son, Simon, on the other hand, has level one autism. And it looks very different on him, since he has no intellectual delay. And when he was a baby, I really didn't think he had autism. But now looking back, I can see some of the signs in Simon as well as a baby. So we'll be sharing home video and examples from our two sons from our home to yours. So these are some examples of what autism can look like. The first sign is not responding to your voice. Now Simon, because he has level one autism, would actually do that. He would hear the sound of my voice and he would get excited. But Ezra never did that. And I'm talking not once. Did he hear the sound of my voice and get excited about it? I wondered, why is it that when I enter the room, let's say he's in his crib and he's kind of whining a little bit. He's a new baby, four or five months old. And I come in and I say, oh Ezra, it's okay, Mommy's here. There's no response or reaction that I can see. Nothing. He's still doing the exact same thing that he was doing, didn't have any kind of response that was different. So a neurotypical kid would most likely kind of turn towards the voice or get excited that Mommy's here and recognize that, hey, this is my mom's voice. Now he probably did recognize that this is his mommy's voice, but he didn't respond in a neurotypical way. And so that was one of the earliest signs that a newborn baby showed, showed autism because I was like, uh, this is different. I've never seen this before. Right? Ezra was my fourth child, so it had three before. And I was like, this is not something that I'm used to. This type of behavior is different. So that's the first sign. I'm so excited to tell you about my book. I wrote it for parents who have autistic kids to help support them and build strong relationships with their kids and find joy in the journey. Click the link below in the description and get your own copy. The second sign is no or limited social smile. Yeah. Now, both my autistic kids smile a lot, a lot. And when we lived in an RV full time, traveling to all the national parks, yep, that's five kids in an RV, me and my husband, we would go to caves and we'd go on hikes and Ezra especially would laugh and smile the whole time. Ezra would be a mile down the trail if daddy would keep up, huh? Where are you going, Ezra? Where are you going? He loved those types of adventures. He still does. We go on hikes all the time. And it's one of those things where, you know, he's my happiest child and he smiles a lot. The smile is not a social smile. Now Simon with his level one autism, he will show us a social smile, but he learned how to do it. We actually kind of had to teach him how to smile back when someone's smiling at you. And he caught on really quick on how to smile socially. But Ezra has a harder time with that. As a baby, both Ezra and Simon really didn't show me a social smile at three months old. So my three older kids who are not autistic, Mark, Benson, and Marie, when I have them as babies, they would always show me a social smile at three months old. It was like clockwork. Can you go this way? Benson. Hello. Hello, Marie. Hello, baby. Hello. Then I had Ezra and when I talked to him, he didn't smile back. And I had no clue why. I just figured, well, he'll learn, you know. And now even though he smiles more than like any of my other kids, it's not a social smile. He's not looking right at you smiling, like reacting to your smile or responding socially, trying to get your attention with his smile. Those are examples of social smiles. The reason he's smiling is because you're smiling back at him, that type of thing. And by the way, it's totally okay. If he's uncomfortable with that, I'm not going to force it on him. It's not a big deal. But it is a sign of possible autism in your baby. A neurotypical baby would most likely learn how to do a social smile before five, six months old. Sign three is a little bit older baby. They have to be able to really focus on a certain toy or object or a mobile. So I want you to notice if your baby is really fixed on an odd angle or an odd light and just watching it for a long time. So it's completely expected for babies to look at mobiles as they're going around right in their crib. An example of an autistic behavior would be if a baby picked up a car and instead of trying to drive it, it picked it up and then just spin the wheel at like the corner with the light coming through like that. And can do that and be entertained by that action for an extended period of time. Both Ezra and Simon did that in different ways. It looked different, right? Ezra still won't take a car and go vroom vroom. He likes to take a car and throw it. Simon will watch how other people like other peers and kids in his class will play with toys and he'll copy them. He will copy us all day long. I have to be so careful what I say, but we still really encourage him to be his own autistic self and to do what he wants with the toys too. Because what if he thinks of a more fun way to use the toy? Like who am I to tell him you have to use it this way? Saying four is they don't try and get your attention. Now it doesn't mean that they don't want your attention. Like every baby autistic or not is still learning, oh, if I do this, this happens, right? This is cause and effect. It's quite complicated because adults are not consistent with their reactions. And so these kids, these babies are just entering this world, they're trying to figure things out. And an autistic baby will sometimes not try and get your attention as much as a neurotypical child. My three older kids would always try and get my attention. As soon as they figured out that, oh, if I put my arms up, someone will come pick me up. They would be searching for me in the room. If they were laying down, maybe having tummy time, they would try and look up and find me and then try and yell at me or get my attention in some way. But Ezra, he'd be doing tummy time. But for me as a neurotypical parent, it looked like he was in his own little world. It looked like he didn't even seem to care or mind that I was there. He wasn't looking for me. He wasn't trying to find me. He wasn't trying to get my attention. There was nothing that he did that I could see that meant that he wanted my attention in any way. And I think he did. He wanted some of his problems to be solved. For example, he wanted his diaper to be changed. It took him many years of, he was like three years old when he figured out that I could actually help him and solve some of his problems and, you know, give him food or something. So the fifth sign is kind of related to the fourth sign. And the fourth sign is, you know, you don't try and get someone's attention. The fifth sign is you don't really respond when someone else is trying to get your attention as well. And that's going to look different on each child. For example, if Ezra as a child was laying on the bed and I would go and talk to him and put my face close to his face, he would usually look away. Now it makes sense because I know he's oversimulated visually and I know that that's uncomfortable for him. Understandably. I'm not going to put my face really close to his face and tell him to do something. Whatever details or sensory input he's dealing with, it's too much. It makes him uncomfortable. So as a child, as a baby, when I didn't know that and I was like trying to get his attention and I'm like, honey, look at mommy, you know, and then I didn't get a response and he's like looking away, that's a sign of autism. With Simon, who has level one autism, he would respond to me as a baby, but it would take a lot of extra effort on my part. Usually I just kind of have to throw him in the air a little bit and tickle him and then he would respond socially. He would look back at me and he would respond to my effort getting his attention. So that's, that's that sign. The sixth sign is they don't like to be held as a baby. Now that was very true for my son Ezra, but not true at all for my son Simon. So keep in mind, this isn't a rule that's like, it rules it out, but with Ezra, he did not like to be held. If your child does not like being held as a baby, please go get them checked out by a pediatrician, please, because there could be many things that are wrong and it also could be autism. And so if there's nothing physically wrong that the doctor can see, then you might want to consider, oh, my child could possibly be autistic. It was, it was extremely hard to feed him. So we actually moved to the bottle and did formula with the bottle and it was great. It was great. We had this special chair that kept him at the perfect angle. And then we have this blanket that we would fold and put the bottle right on the blanket and just slide into his mouth. I watched him to make sure that he was safe and getting his milk and everything was okay. And he was pro. He was good at that. But Ezra still is like, don't touch me. Don't hug me. The only thing that he enjoys with physical contact with another person would be like deep massages and like deep tickles. And he does really like that. He will laugh and he likes that. Sign seven is if your baby does not cry unless they need food or need to be changed. That was Ezra. I remember getting up in the middle of the night wondering, like, is my baby okay? Is he still breathing? And I'd go and check on him and he'd be awake. A newborn baby would be awake in his bed just cooling. Just happy as can be. Just content. And I thought, oh, this is an easy baby. And now I look back and I was like, that was a sign of autism. He wasn't hungry when he woke up. He didn't need a diaper change. He didn't need me. And I just felt like that was so odd because it was so different than my three older kids. And even Simon was more like that. He would cry because he liked being held and he didn't like being alone, but he was more content. He was just naturally more content than any of my three older kids. Sign eight has to do with eye contact. My three older kids would have eye contact at three months right on the dot. It was like clockwork. And then I had my fourth child, Ezra. And at three months, I remember holding him, trying to get his attention, and his eyes would never blink to mine. Never. And I mean not once. And we took him back to the eye doctor again and again. And the eye doctor's just like, stop coming back here. His eyes are fine. So if your baby is naturally by themselves making lots of eye contact, then that's a sign that they may not be autistic. We talk about this a lot in our ASD club, which is a weekly chat that you can join. Click the link below in the description and I'll see you next week. Sign nine is they don't seem to notice when a peer is next to them or in the room. A peer as in someone their same age. So if I have a nine month old who's sitting up, kind of playing with a toy, and then I put another nine month old six inches away from them, sitting up playing with a toy, do they respond? Do they react? Do they care? Do they seem to care? Maybe they care a lot that a peer is playing with them, but maybe they don't. A neurotypical kid a lot of times will notice, oh, there's another being that's kind of my same size that's right here. And they'll maybe try and grab the other kid's toe. But a neurotypical child will respond in some way socially. So Ezra didn't really like having a child there. He wouldn't push them. He wouldn't reach out for them. He would just try and go away from them every time. He wanted to distance himself away from the peer that was in the room. He did not try to do parallel play, definitely didn't try and play with them. It was not something that he naturally just did by himself. So Ezra might seem like he doesn't want to interact socially with anyone, but he loves being social. He's just social in his own way, and it looks different than a neurotypical person, and that's okay. That is a sign of possible autism. It could also be that they're just super introverted and annoyed that, you know, another child's here because maybe they're not used to it too. It could be that as well. Put in the comments another sign of autism in babies. I know I didn't get all of them, so add to the list and put it in the comments, and you never know who your comment might bless. We still have a lot more to share of our unique normal with five kids and two on the spectrum, so please consider subscribing. Sign 10 is sharing the moment. This can look different. Maybe your child has a toy, and then they're on your lap, and then they look back and show you the toy. Look, Mommy, this is a toy, you know. I'm so excited about this, or maybe show what the toy can do or why they like it. That is sharing the moment. Now Ezra never did that. He still doesn't do that. That sharing the moment with someone, it's a very social thing. It usually involves eye contact and social smiles, and so it's not natural for Ezra at all. For Simon, on the other hand, he will sometimes share the moment, but I noticed that when Simon was actually in the middle of his autism assessment, the doctor showed him a doll and did a bath. That was actually part of the ADOS2 test for that age group, and you're supposed to like a birthday party or a bath, and he did bath time. He showed, oh, put the little bottle of shampoo on the baby, and of course there was no shampoo. We were just pretending, and then he took this little towel and was like, let's wipe the baby's head with the towel, and then the doctor stepped back to see how long it would take for my son Simon to share the moment, to look up, to seemingly notice that the doctor left, and the whole time they were there, Simon didn't look up once. He's very interested and focused on this doll and having bath time. He never shared the moment, and so that definitely was a sign of autism. A neurotypical kid would notice that the adult left and maybe would look up at least to see where he was, or share the moment and be like, oh, look, the doll's right here, and look what I can do. Look, are you watching me? Now, do you want me to tell you what Ezra did during that moment? He took the doll and threw it, and he took the tub and threw it, and then he took this other thing, he took everything and just threw it all, and then ran over and got them and then threw them again. Obviously, both of their responses were very different, but they were both autistic responses. Sign 11 is repetitive hand movements. Yes, even little babies can do repetitive hand movements. The 12th and last sign is your child either doesn't babble, or if they do babble, they're not babbling to get your attention. Ezra really didn't babble. He started babbling when he was about six months old, and then he stopped when he was about nine months old, and he never really babbled again. Simon would babble a lot. I remember even telling the doctor during the assessment for autism, we just had it two years ago, so it was like yesterday. I remember telling him, he doesn't have autism because look, he's babbling, and then the very patient clinical psychologist was like, yeah, but who is he babbling at? Is he trying to get your attention? Is he trying to communicate with you? And I was like, no, he's not. He's just babbling to himself. So most babies will babble to themselves, but as they grow up, especially nine months old, they should be trying to babble at you. And if you don't see that, or maybe they don't babble at all, then that is a sign of possible autism. Here's 12 signs of autism under two years old, and here's our autism playlist. Remember, if you have an autistic child, you're in good company.