Last Wednesday, I attended an event at CTBL and met Ms. Cristina of the Autism Society Philippines ( will blog about the organization and the simple sharing on my upcoming entries ).

I have here a list of 12 signs and symptoms if your child is autistic taken from the leaflet handed to me. For parents and siblings, I advise you to read and be accept the reality about the child’s condition once you find out that majority of the signs and symptoms are present.

No Pointing at 1 Year

- Usually, kids at such age would point at the objects they want or things that they want to do. Instead of pointing out to me that he wants to drink milk, he would try to destroy his crib and get the milk by himself.

No babbling by 1 year; no single words by 16 months; no two-word phrases by 24 months

- I remember him saying “Papa” and “Mama” when he was just eight months old. When he celebrated his first birthday, his speech development stopped. It took him a long while before he managed to say a “real” word or phase without us forcing him to speak.

Any loss of language skills at any time

- Like what happened in item #2, his language skill development stopped all of a sudden.

No pretend playing

- Little kids love to play as if they’re adults working in an office or curing patients in the hospital. When I was young, I pretended to be a doctor, teacher and a pop star. Carlo was just there. Just there.

Little interest in making friends

- When he was first enrolled in a regular school, he would rather play by himself than mingle with other kids. He was a bit anto-social and only mingled with his teacher.

Extremely short attention span

- He is impatient. You can never make him wait or else he’ll throw tantrums.

No response when called by name, indifference to others

- Because of this, we first concluded that my brother has hearing problems. We would call him by his name but he won’t respond. Once a doctor insisted he has hearing defects, but how come he reacts whenever he hears the jingle of his favorite commercial?

Little or no eye contact

- Sometimes, I would force him to look at me in the eye. Unfortunately, he never did look at me the way I instructed him to do.

Repetitive body movements, such as hand clapping and rocking

- Repetitive open and close of doors, scanning of magazines, hand clapping and more.

Intense tantrums

- He usually throws tantrums if he’s getting impatient especially in restaurants and other public places.

Fixations on a single object, such as spinning fan

- Aircon, jackstones, tennis ball, shapes etc.

Unusually strong resistance to changes in routines

- He hates change of plans. We must stick to his daily routines or else he’ll get upset at times.

So those are the signs and symptoms of autism. If you think that majority of the mentioned details are present to your child, better do something about it ASAP.