Intuitive Learner – Infant to Toddler

By Corrin Howe

One of the primary logos associated with autism is a puzzle with a piece missing. I love the idea of a puzzle because it defines many moments of our nine-year journey with autism. Three weeks after birth Jonathan started crying everyday like clockwork from 4:00 p.m. to between 8 to 10:00 p.m. My husband and I fell into our bed only two or three days into this ten-month period of daily crying.

“You had a baby before. What do you think is wrong?” my husband asked.

“Josh was an easy baby. He didn’t do this. But I looked it up in a baby book today. I think it might be colic,” I answered.

We tried everything. We read everything. We asked for advice. We talked to the doctor. Nothing seemed to console the inconsolable infant. We began to realize that noise, activity and large numbers of people were the triggers for hours of crying to follow.

Then our son turned a year old. Instead of crying all night long, he stopped communicating. We only knew he was awake if we checked on him. I often wondered how long he’d sit in the dark in his crib waiting for someone to come get him.

At that age my other two children were crawling out of the crib, crawling out of the stroller and climbing over baby safety gates, Jonathan sat basically where I put him. For a while I really enjoyed how easy he was. I didn’t have to worry about leaving him alone. I didn’t go nuts having to put all my pots and pans back into the cabinets after he pulled them all out. I could put him in a stroller and walk for miles and he’d sit content with a box of raisins and his bottle.

Then came the days when I started to worry about the fact he wasn’t trying to crawl. He wasn’t trying to investigate all the “not for Jonathan” items in the house. When he was ten months old he said “ball” and “Bob” appropriately. Then he stopped saying these two words. He was 17 months old and he wasn’t saying anything, not even “Mama” or “Dada.”

However, when he did start to crawl, he crawled immediately. I’d lived in this house for almost two years and had never seen any of my friend’s crawling infants attempt the step between my kitchen and living room. One day I left Jonathan in the living room to check on food in the kitchen. Jonathan didn’t like being left along and let me know about it. When I didn’t come back to get him, he crawled to me. On his first time he attempted to crawl, he crawled from the living room into the kitchen including climbing the step up into the kitchen.

There were other things like this over the years. He couldn’t or didn’t do something. He didn’t even attempt to do it. Then one day he decided he would do it. And he did. Perfectly. It was this way with crawling. It was this way with walking. It was this way with opening doors in the house.

At his 24-month check up, he still wasn’t talking. The doctor suggested we start the protocol evaluation for autism. The first evaluation was for hearing. Since my older son had severe ear infections, two sets of tubes and was in the process of hearing tests, I knew Jonathan’s issue wasn’t hearing. However, the doctor insisted we follow the protocol.

We went to the test. Jonathan was placed in a sound proof booth with huge earphones placed on his head. Remember, he’s not verbal, so I wasn’t sure how they were going to test his hearing. The lady sat outside a two-way glass and pushed hundreds of buttons. At the end of the test, Jonathan was declared to have a thirty percent hearing loss. I asked the basis of the opinion. The doctor explained she was looking for Jonathan’s eyes to look to the side of his head where the noise was played. I knew Jonathan was more fascinated with what she was doing outside the booth than he was about the noises. The doctor recommended immediate tubes in the ears. I picked up my toddler and left. I never went back. I told the referring physician I wasn’t going through her protocol any longer.

By the end of the month Jonathan was saying “Mama” and “Dada.” Two months later (when he was twenty-seven months old) out of nowhere he said, “Josh pushed and I bumped my head.” We were in a hotel lobby with my in-laws. We all almost fell off our chairs. He went from no words to seven word sentences in three months.

And so it went for the first three and a half years of Jonathan’s life. On the one hand he was behind his peers when it came to meeting developmental milestones like smiling, crawling, talking, potty training, etc. Yet, on the other hand, he was, in many ways, so far ahead of his peers.

Even without the ability to talk, he was fascinated with the alphabet. He’d indicate his desire for me to write out the alphabet over and over and over again. He liked seeing me draw the letters. He could point out the letters if I asked him to point them out.

He was putting together jig-saw-puzzles.

He was playing practical jokes. Who expects a three year old to purposely hide a puzzle piece until everyone gives up looking for it? Then he calmly pulls it out from under his leg. Who expects a three year old to hide his favorite blanket in a hotel nightstand and sit there calmly while two adults and two teenagers search and back-track the entire hotel for an hour? And when everyone falls onto the double beds panicked about what the night holds without the treasured blanket, he walks over to the bottom drawer and triumphantly pulls out the blanket and announces with a huge smile, “Here it is!”

How could a little guy be so smart while being so far behind? Look for future posts to find out.

Corrie Howe started her professional career as a journalist and freelance writer. She stopped writing for money twenty years ago and became a stay-at-home mother of three children ranging from 7 to 17. The middle son has Asperger’s Syndrome which she blogs about at Just Because My Pickle Talks Doesn’t Make Me An Idiot.