How young can a child be to receive a diagnosis of ASD?
Some children have such clear symptoms that they can be reliably diagnosed with ASD at 12 – 15 months, but most clinicians will want to wait until a child is 18 – 24 months before giving a diagnosis. Diagnoses made under age 3 are less reliable (e.g., less predictive of stable diagnoses over time) than diagnoses made in older children, so it is important for children who receive diagnoses when they are very young to be re-evaluated each year, including measurement of changes in cognitive and language skills. In later years, re-evaluations usually focus more on how behaviors and skills have changed more than on diagnosis.
