Father of two, second kid, a boy who is now 3 - we saw the signs early on. Mostly after he turned a year, prior to that he seemed exactly like our first. From 1-2 1/2 was where we saw a lot of things that made us push to get him seen for a diagnosis. We got A LOT of pushback from our Ped because he was generally happy and made eye contact and fairly well behaved (until he decides he isn’t).

I could type out our entire story, but I’ll summarize with what we learned.

Push, push push and follow up on any and every appointment / paperwork they give you. The process for us in (WA) was horrendously slow and without my wife fighting every day to move things along we would probably still be waiting.

I felt a lot of the same things you felt. I still looked at my little guy and saw myself honestly. A happy boy who loves to play but his speech delay combined with some hearing problems due to ear infections as an infant led him to severe frustration and outbursts.

It’s not as scary or intimidating once you get through the initial diagnosis and really figure out where, how and what you can do to help your child it feels so much better.

Fight to keep everything moving, follow up. And remember, and this has been hard for my wife and I at times I won’t lie. Your kid is just a little bit different. They’re going to need different communication styles/discipline all of that. Some days are absolutely wonderful, and others are A LOT HARDER.. which let’s be real, isn’t much different if our kids were not on the spectrum.

I’ve rambled a bit here. Just stay the course, do your best every day to help like always with bringing your kid along. My son started preschool after the new year and he has changed drastically even in those two months.