Diagnosing autism in toddlers can be challenging because there is no medical test, such as a blood test, to identify the disorder – it may help you to learn these 4 Best Methods to Assess Your Toddler for Autism.
Medics often assess the child’s behavior and developmental history to diagnose.
Autism may sometimes be detected when your toddler turns 18 months.
By age two, autism diagnosis by a proficient doctor can be deemed reliable.
However, most toddlers don’t get a decisive diagnosis until they are much older.
Indeed, it isn’t easy to diagnose some people until they are adults or adolescents.
Screening, monitoring, assessment, and diagnosing toddlers with autism must be conducted as early as possible to ensure they get the support and service they need to reach their full potential.
Here are the best methods to assess autism in your toddler.
Table of Contents
Developmental Monitoring
This method monitors how your toddler grows and adjusts over a period.
It also assesses whether the child meets the expected developmental milestones, such as speaking, learning, playing, moving, and behaving.
Parents, grandparents, caregivers, and early childhood providers can participate in developmental monitoring.
This checklist of milestones can assess how your toddler is developing.
Contact a doctor about your worries if your child fails to meet these milestones.
Once you visit a clinic, the doctor will also perform developmental monitoring.
The medic might ask you questions about your toddler’s development or play with the child to assess how the child is developing and meeting the milestones.
Remember that a missed milestone might indicate a huge problem.
Developmental Screening
Developmental screening closely checks how the toddler is developing.
The child will get a simple test, or you will complete a questionnaire about your toddler.
Usually, the tools used for behavioral and developmental screening comprise formal questionnaires or checklists based on research that asks you questions about the toddler’s development.
The action behavior chat questionnaire is one of the best you can use as it asks you more about the child’s movement, language, behavior, thinking, and emotions.
Doctors, nurses, and other professionals in healthcare, school, or community settings can perform developmental screening.
Cognitive Testing
Cognitive testing is worth performing when assessing autism in your child.
The main reason is that cognitive testing allows you to examine the child’s behavior under different conditions.
Diagnosing autism in toddlers is a socially loaded test that might be hard to perform in some children.
This study shows that some children will perform better when answering specific questions in a structured cognitive test.
The best thing about cognitive testing is that it lets you learn more about the toddler’s thoughts.
For instance, you might want to know more about how the child solves problems, plans, and organizes stuff.
Do not confuse cognitive testing with ABA testing that aims to evaluate your kid for placement in subsequent applied behavior analysis treatment programs.
Comprehensive Developmental Evaluation
A simple screening tool doesn’t offer a detailed diagnosis.
Instead, it shows if the toddler is on the proper development route.
A comprehensive developmental evaluation is handy here as it deeply assesses your child’s development.
The test is commonly done by trained specialists, such as child psychologists, developmental pediatricians, occupational therapists, or speech-language pathologists.
The results of this assessment identify if the child requires early intervention services unique treatments, or both.
Lastly, research more about autism in toddlers, especially the support and therapies your child needs to perform well.
