There are no prenatal tests for autism. Autism is usually diagnosed between two and three years old. However, there are a group of signs, that when taken together can be early warning signals. Problems that are most often seen as early as six months, are not smiling or looking at their parent’s faces, not imitating a smile or hand waving, very little babbling and a general lack of interest in the world around them. Sometimes the child may appear deaf because they do not respond to voices.

At this point, there are no prenatal tests for autism. In most children, parents will start to be aware of differences around the ages of 12-18 months. This is mainly because before 12 months, unless they miss the major milestones or the lack of social connection is so obvious, it is tough to tell if a child is suffering from a developemental issue of if they are just on the farther end of “normal” development. Pediatricians, parents and psychiatrists/psychologists are doing more and more research on identifying earlier indicators (early intervention is paramount…the sooner the better). Research continues to try and figure out exactly what causes autism, why it takes time for the symptoms to appear clearly and how to identify it on a chemical level. Until then, observation and and parent referall is the largest and best key to early indentification.

I started noticing my sons autistic behaviors at 2. He had been progressing normally and then he just “turned off”. We thought he was deaf, so we took him to an audiologist and they ran hearing tests. His hearing was bad, the way they had to fix it was tubes. He had too much fluid built up in his ears. After the tubes he still didn’t show much of the progress he had before. So we started worrying. We got him into a Home Base program because he was too young for preschool and that was the first time it was brought to our attention. He went through that year ok and went on to preschool. That is when he got diagnosed. He is PDD-NOS but he doctor believes he has Asperger’s Syndrome which is a form of Autism, he just didn’t want to diagnose it until he was a little older and could communicate better with him. He still really wasn’t talking at all during his first diagnoses.

Things to look for include being withdrawn, not interacting socially with others, no or little communication, stimming, stacking or ordering things in rows. Things like that.

Hope that helps a little.

No, there are not any prenatal markers for autism that doctors can identify at this point.

typically the earliest diagnosis is between 12-15 months but this would take a very savvy doctor/ psychologist to find it this early even.

there is no prenatal test nor just right after the child is born. autism can be confirmed at age 3.

The earliest that autism is diagnosed is around 18 – 24 months , but usually it is later than this, sometimes not until a child has entered education.

My son was diagnosed just after his second birthday, but I started noticing obvious signs around 15 months. When I think back though, in retrospect I see that he was exhibiting signs even earlier than that.

Like others have said, there is no neo/pre natal tests. And the majority of pediatricians won’t refer for an evaluation earlier than at least 2 years of age.