Autism varies in the extent of severity of its symptoms and often goes undiagnosed if the child is lightly affected or has some other masking disability as well. it is complex disorder, requiring the attention of a team of specialists, including physician, psychiatrist, speech therapist, neurologist and other professionals which conduct an comprehensive testing procedure on the child. Doctors mainly rely on child’s characteristic behavioural patterns, like impaired ability in interacting with others and forming relationships, inflexibility to change in routines, fascination with certain objects, and repetitive behaviours.
Parents should become alert if their infant does not cuddle, does not make eye contact and do not show the need of any form of physical contact. As the child grows, he lags behind others of the same age in communicating with others and other social behaviours. The doctors conduct a language test, neurological assessment and several other tests to make sure that the displayed symptoms are of autism. The hearing power is also tested, and of the child is not found to exhibit reasonable symptoms of classical autism, he is tested for PDDNOS. Some children may instead be suffering from disintegrative disorders like Asperger’s or
Rett’s.