Autism Symptoms Checklist
Download a FREE PRINTABLE autism symptoms checklist or diagnostic list for aspergers to help identify early signs in toddlers or older children as soon as possible. Suspecting that your child may have an autistic disorder is never fun, but the sooner you determine what's going on with your child the better their chances are of gaining necessary life skills.
Early intervention that involves applied behavior analysis with an ABA therapist, who has gone through training, greatly increases the chances of recovery from symptoms. It's not worth denying there may be a problem with your child. This will not make the warning signs you are seeing go away, in fact, they will likely only get worse.
Additional treatments for autistic disorder available are also important to start as soon as possible, such as biomedical treatments or occupational therapy for children that also appear to have issues with sensory processing.
The autism symptom checklists are not intended to diagnose your child. They should be able to provide you with a good starting point for determining whether your child needs further evaluation, at which time you would want to take the form to your doctor.
The first checklist gives a list of the characteristics for autism as indicated by the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The second is an autism symptoms checklist for toddlers that is great for parents to use.
DSM-IV Checklist
You will need Adobe Reader (the latest version is recommended) installed on your computer in order to open and print an autism symptoms checklist. You can get Adobe Reader here (a new window will open so you can download it without leaving this page, but you will need to temporarily disable any pop up blockers to open the new window).
If you want to open the file in your browser window, just click on the image. However, if you want to download the file to view later, then right-click on the link and choose "Save Target As" or "Save File As." Then select where you want to save the file on your hard drive.
Once you have saved the file, locate where you saved it, and double click to open.
In order to print, open the downloaded file, and select the "Print" option.
Autism Symptoms Checklist for Toddlers
You may also find the following chart related to asperger syndrome behavior to be helpful for an older child that is communicating fairly well. This is similar to the first autism symptoms checklist that is provided and has been taken from the DSM-IV. However, it does appear that this diagnosis will be changing with the coming of the DSM-V and may have different terminology.
If you haven't already, be sure to download my eBook with the best tips and techniques for helping all children by clicking the image below!
References
1. American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Pervasive Developmental Disorders In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (Fourth edition---text revision (DSM-IV-TR). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 70-75.
2. Baron-Cohen, S. et. al. (1992) "Can autism be detected at 18 months? The needle, the haystack, and the CHAT," The British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, pp. 839-843.