Autism Expert's Experience With Child Regression

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]June 2018, my son was born. He was like perfectly fine. When he was 20 months old, within 4 weeks, he just had a rapid decline in his skills. He went from having eye contact to now not having eye contact. Meaning he wouldn't look at you. No, he would not look at us. At all? No, like he would not look at us, me and my husband, like his parents.

[00:00:20]From 6 weeks old, he was sleeping the night. So, we got really lucky with him sleeping the night >> Wow. to now when he was having his regression, he'd stay awake all night.

[00:00:30]And he would be hyperactive at night and wouldn't be tired the next day. He also had words. He used to say like "Arja", which is like come here in Urdu, and he used to, you know, he knew his colors, say "Mama, Dada", or like he was understanding language to no words at all. So, I went to the GP and I told them my son is now doing this, like he's now stemming, he's now has an aversion to sounds, he's now not sleeping, he's now really he would not eat more than one bite of food a day. And when a child is that skinny, I got a lot of judgment from family and friends, like we can see his bones, you're not feeding him. Like you know, like we weren't thinking about it day and night. I went to the GP and I [snorts] explained what we saw, which were, you know, he was absolutely fine, had eye contact, had words, and then something's changed. And he's lost all of those skills.

[00:01:19]And they told me, "Yeah, sounds like he has autism." And I asked them, "How did he get autism? Because he wasn't like that before."

[00:01:27]And they told me, "Autism is genetic. He always had autism and he just started showing symptoms later." Autism is diagnosed based on a series of behaviors. So, if he didn't have those behaviors before, how can they say he always had autism? I So, I said to him, "No, no, he didn't used to do these things, something's changed. What's changed?"

[00:01:46]And I was just brushed off and gaslit, to be honest, like loads of parents are.

[00:01:51]So, about 36% of parents of children with autism will say that their child has had some sort of regression. Right.

[00:01:58]>> Where they had words and they're now no longer talking. Where they ate well and now they're picky eater. My son was part of that 36%.