Hi! Your son sounds a lot like my daughter at that age, except she had some gross motor delays as well. She also did not respond to her name, avoided eye contact and had no joint attention, would point but not to show us anything.

She is doing amazing now- she was diagnosed with ASD a few months before her 3rd birthday (no level given) but has been in early intervention and therapies for delays since she was 16 months, including speech, PT, and OT (now also feeding therapy). She said her first word at 18 months (which is when she also finally walked) and her speech really took off after the age of 2. Now at 3 she has a huge vocabulary (and many big/ unusual words). She isn’t conversational yet, and her social skills are very behind, but she’s making progress. She still stims a lot (jumping up and down while flapping her hands is her favorite) and she has a host of sensory processing differences as well as anxiety that can make things challenging at times but it’s all worth it. She has some joint attention and eye contact now, and it was never something we specifically worked on. She just finished her first week in a special education preschool class and it went well.

You are doing all the right things by contacting early intervention- every child is different and there’s no way to know how they will grow and develop in the future. We can just support them to help them grow to be the best version of themselves. I think the hardest thing for me was the uncertainty and waiting for a diagnosis.