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Autism Parent Support Group

11 month old showing signs ?

11-month-old’s development — would love some reassurance/perspectives

My daughter is 11 months old and overall seems like a very happy, active, curious baby. I’ve become quite anxious about autism after reading too much online, and I’d really appreciate some honest perspectives from other parents.

She has good eye contact and smiles at us. She responds to her name and familiar words such as “water”, “bye bye” and “come here”. She babbles “mama”, “dada”, “tatata” and sometimes “aja” (Urdu for come here). She waves bye-bye when prompted, claps, gives high-fives/salaam, reaches her arms up to be picked up and follows us if we leave the room. She crawls over to me and often sits on my feet or wants to be picked up. She also looks where I point and sometimes looks back at me after something exciting happens.

She imitates things like coughing, sticking her tongue out and facial expressions, enjoys songs and silly noises, and likes playing with us. She can be a little wary of unfamiliar people and often comes back towards me.

Physically she crawls everywhere, pulls herself to stand, cruises along furniture, transfers objects between hands, has a pincer grip and feeds herself finger foods. She is extremely active and constantly wants to explore/climb/move.

The things that have made me worry are:

* She sometimes shakes her head from side to side, although this comes and goes and can happen while playing/teething.
* She sometimes rotates/twirls her wrist, particularly when excited or when trying to get our attention.
* She waves with quite a wristy movement, although she only really does it when asked to wave or when saying goodbye.
* She sometimes waves/throws her arms around when excited.
* She bounces/slams herself forward and backwards on the sofa when excited.
* She sometimes takes food out of her mouth, touches/squishes it and then puts it back in.
* She is VERY active and doesn’t sit still for long.
* She doesn’t particularly enjoy cuddling or lying still on me, although she does seek me out and wants to be picked up/touch me in other ways.

She hasn’t had any clear loss of skills. There are just days where she might not wave or do a particular gesture she did the day before.

I know some of these behaviours can be seen in autistic children, but I’m struggling to understand what is actually meaningful at this age versus completely normal baby behaviour.

Would you say her overall social communication sounds reassuring for an 11-month-old? And are any of these individual behaviours things you’d genuinely be concerned about, or am I overinterpreting normal baby behaviours?