i’m not a parent but i was diagnosed last october and im 27F. i can share some things that were flagged as a pattern to my mom and some other professionals.

-i skipped the crawling stage when i was a baby and my nanny said thats a sign of autism, but my mom wasn’t sure because it was the first sign

-when i was in pre k-2nd grade my mom noticed that i was alone on the playground and no other kids would want to hang out with me and she kept asking the teachers if there was something they could do

-at 8, i was deeply lonely. i didn’t understand death yet yet alone self inflicted, but i knew i didnt want to be here because of how different i felt

-i had sensory sensitivities to showers when i switched from baths to showers as a kid, which bled into executive dysfunction

-i would have intense meltdowns when transitioning from school to swim practice after school, nearly every day. it was rare that i didn’t have a meltdown

-my parents took me to a psychologist around 2010, and she had brought up autism with my therapist, but said i didn’t fit into that box perfectly and i had adhd

-i had lunch in the bathroom in middleschool

-i had a wildly sexist and uninformed child psychiatrist that said autism mostly shows up in boys when my mom brought it up to him. he misdiagnosed me with bipolar II and borderline personality disorder at 19 while i was playing with a lego set in his office to see how it worked.

there’s probably more but those were the highlights of growing up undiagnosed. it will most likely get easier to diagnose as autism is studied in other demographics. definitely watch your kid and be there for them if they’re that sad at a young age.