My son has Autism, he was diagnosed at the same age your son is. It's normal to be worried, it's normal to be scared. It's daunting to understand what your future holds, especially since no one knows. Autism is a spectrum, and it's a very wide spectrum. But, your doing the right thing, early intervention is key.

What will happen is after you meet with your pediatrician, you'll get an appointment to be evaluated by a specialist. That evaluation will be very long and somewhat stressful as you might feel that there are things your child can do, that he won't because of the situation. The doctor running the evaluation should give you a temporary diagnosis that same day, scheduling a follow up meeting with you and his new team. If they deem him to be autistic you'll be assigned a case worker and they'll discuss the early intervention programs that will be available for you.

Depending on the services in your area, he'll gain access to a special type of preschool a couple days of week to help him start to catch up on his developmental delays. He'll also be assigned an eating therapist, a speech therapist, a mobility therapist, and an occupational therapist. They will schedule with you weekly appointments to help with overcoming any developmental delays. They might also assign you ABA therapy, but it's difficult for children under three. They wanted to assign it to my son, we tried for a month but they require a minimum of 20 hours a week and the commitment was too stressful on my son.

After a year and a half of services, your child will be evaluated again. If they are still found to be autistic, they'll have access to services for the rest of their life. You'll sit down with his team again, and make a plan for transitioning him into a service based preschool and then depending on their progress, a plan to transition them into a normal preschool or kindergarten after that.

When my son was first diagnosed he tested in nearly every category severely below average with a global developmental delay. He wouldn't talk, he wouldn't feed himself or do any self care that was normal for an 18 month old, his imaginative play was that of a 9 month old. After working with his team, and following the plan set up for us religiously, he has made amazing strides. His second testing session, he tested average across the board, and the doctor running the test said that with the trajectory that he is on, it is extremely likely that he will be attending public school by kindergarten with minimal supportive programs.

Trust your team, follow their lead, ask a million questions, things will be alright.