In the beginning…

B was just a few weeks old when i noticed his preference for lateral gazing. His head straight ahead but his eyes looked to the right or left instead of looking at what was straight in front of him,. Thst is probably why i don’t his autism is vaccine related. I noted no regression following any of his vaccines. Two months was no time do intervention, we didn’t even know there was a problem. We suspected something wasn’t right between 6 months and a year but even then we didn’t know what it was. He met all of his motor developemental mile stones early. He rolled, sat, pulled up and walked by the time he was 8 months old. Except he didn’t hold his own bottle and didn’t have a neat pinsor grasp - he avoided using his index finger and thumb to pick things up. He didn’t use his index finger to point. Thinking back…. He is 32 now so that’s a lot of thinking back. I don’t remember when he gestured instead of pointing but it was well beyond when his peers did. In reality i didn’t think about intervention until he was dianosed at age 2 1/2. Even then the doctors were assuring me that boys talk later than girls. We went thru hearing test - all okay. Fragile X genetic text - not that either. I just slowly noticed him fall behind his peers in so many areas. I remember once being in an airport when his gramee was flying home to Houston. We found an uncrowded gate and let him go using the seats for balance when he needed and go between me and his gramee. There was one woman nearby and i noticed her watching us, but especially B for quite some time. Friendly people that we are we struck up a conversation with her. She was a child psychologist and we joked about “how does B look”. We exchanged pleasantries but i didn’t ask about any of the milestones he was missing. I know now she saw something but it would have been unethical and unprofessional for her to say anything… in an airport waiting area. It’s just later when i think about that encounter it was 20/20 in the rear view mirror. She had thoughts about the way he interacted and behaved.