An update on my son who is now 6 years old. (standard 1 next year)

His communication improved a lot and now he is able to talk in sentences, play around with friends. but still weak in some understanding but he is improving everyday.

Academic wise, we are surprised he is very good in all subjects especially maths. his teachers are very impressed with his improvement.

We sent him to piano and art class, and surprisingly he do well there.

So to all parents , never give up and please start early intervention. the tiredness and money spent, is worth everything. 

Sharing my thoughts as well.

I have two boys, one is 6 and one is 3, the 6 years old is fairly normal, with a little day dreaming streak and inattentiveness, but otherwise he is pretty neurotypical.

My younger boy has been found with such symptoms from 2 years old:
- Does not respond to name
- Tip toes a lot
- Speech delay
- Minimal babbling
- Infrequent eye contact
- Hyperactivity
- Temper tantrums whenever he like it
- Wakes up few times a night for milk
- Cannot do what a normal 2 year old can do
- Missed milestones in terms of social
- Cannot mimic what adults do like comb hair
- General development delay

Our mistake is he does play a lot of gadgets from small especially at my in laws place, because he is very hyperactive, so to keep him quiet when grandparents cook and do other stuff, they give him tablet, so I would say tablet is a portion to blame for this, with my elder boy when we limit his gadget time his behavior and attention also improved a little.

So we brought the small boy to clinical psychologist at ADMC (all the other famous ones have long waiting list that goes up to years) so we went to who we could, initial assessment cost RM500+ already.

The psychologist recommend him to take up EIP (early intervention classes) and go for OT and SLT, but she could not give a diagnosis yet as he was not 3 years old yet at that time.
But with another older boy to compare, we could see he is definitely not typical behavior and social milestones.
When we bring him for normal checkup even the pediatrician expressed their concerns in terms of him not speaking yet and no simple words at 2 years old.
We had him tested for hearing in sunway medical which is normal.

We started OT from Feb 2019 (till now 8 months) and started SLT from June 2019 (till now 4 months) - and just started EIP in Sept 2019 (2nd month in

Now he has improved a lot and when we compare with the "before" symptoms although he still has a lot to learn:
- Responds to name most of the time (sometimes if bad mood will still ignore)
- No longer tip toes
- Still no speech, but SLT is teaching him to vocalize his needs, he uses hand gestures for certain wants
- A lot of babbling
- Regular eye contact
- Hyperactivity - Still hyper...
- Lesser temper tantrums - possibly because he can communicate with us using hand gestures
- Still wakes up once or twice and occasionally can sleep thru the nite
- Learned more things what a 3 year old can do, wear his own shoes, drink water, go to toilet to pee
- Very affectionate and cheeky, loves to seek attention when hurt himself, asking us to kiss the painful part
- Tries to wear toy spectacles like us, knows what it is for
- Can recognize ABCs and numbers, and colors

It has been a very expensive journey so far, and we've sold off my 2nd property to enable ourselves financially to fund his therapy, we certainly would like to see better support from the government, so at least there is a future for kids like him. Till now we have not gotten an official diagnosis, but we will again visit the clinical psychologist after a few months of EIP - to get a diagnosis, and if he is confirmed to be on the spectrum (actually I suspect he is more towards ADHD than ASD) then we can apply for the disability card which will enable us to get some governmental support.

Looking forward to share more and learn more here, thank you for reading.