Dad's Blog
Local blogger Matthew Baldwin has a post up about his young son and autistic spectrum disorder. There's not really anything that Seattlest can say about this besides encouraging you to go read it if you haven't. This is the internets at their finest.
If you met The Squirrelly in person, this is not something you'd likely see. As you entered the room he might glance briefly in your direction, but would then return to whatever he was doing before and probably ignore you thereafter. Any effort you made to catch his eye would almost certainly be in vain.The technical name for this behavior is "gaze avoidance," and it is one of the symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). The Squirrelly was diagnosed with ASD two weeks ago.
The possibility of ASD was first suggested by his daycare provider in August. The Queen was worried; I was skeptical to the point of dismissiveness. This was the same woman who, just three days after he took his first steps, urged us to take him to a foot doctor because he "walked funny." I assumed that this was just another overreaction on her part, and one (like the "walking funny" comment) that she would never mention again. Instead, she brought it up several more times over the course of the week. It was clear that she was sincerely concerned.
