A bad haircut may have opened our eyes

On mobile, please excuse brevity and formatting.Our son is roughly 2 and a half. He'll be 3 in mid February. He threw a tantrum at the kid's salon which prompted the stylist to ask if he was on the spectrum.At first we were upset with the stylist's assumption but over the past few days we've been hyper-analyzing his behavior. Things that used to just be cute and quirky now seem like signs of ASD.He doesn't really talk. He knows a lot of words but doesn't really use them. He can identify shapes and letters on his flash cards, and sometimes he'll say "cat" when the cat walks by, but that's about the extent of it. I know he's developing slowly when it comes to speech, but I've always chalked it up to him not really having any friends and us being so attentive that he hasn't needed to learn to converse.He does a lot of repetitive things. Anything that spins or rotate will grab his attention and keep him occupied basically indefinitely. Our neighbors have a pinwheel in their yard; Every time we go for a walk, our son will sit and watch it spin for awhile before we continue our walk. I bought him his own -- taking it from him results in the biggest meltdown he's ever had, by far.Lately, he's had a pattern of climbing onto the end table, then stepping to the couch, then stepping on to the floor, over and over and over, all while babbling something incoherent yet deliberately repetitive. He'll do this for 20 minutes at a time, if not longer. Before the hair stylist made us suspect autism, I would have chalked this up to him just being bored, but now I'm not so sure.So obviously the traits I've laid out are all signs of ASD but are they inclusive? I mean, do neurotypical children do these sorts of things too? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2zLBBrf