Joint attention

Most parents probably don't automatically know what joint attention is. (aka "shared attention"). I never knew what it was either. Essentially, joint attention is when a baby or young child looks to a trusted adult to see if the adult is noticing something that the child is noticing. So, if you're on a walk and see a big scary dog, the baby will look to mom or caregiver to see if Mom is reacting to the dog or not. He then takes his cue on how to act from whatever his grown up is doing.

A fun part of the development of shared/joint attention is when the baby starts to take joy in something and wants to share it with his loved ones. I am not sure how long Ian has been doing this, but I first realized it yesterday. A new toy that goes in circles and plays music started running when he accidentally touched it. He got a huge grin, looked at me to see if I saw it too, grinned even bigger when he saw me smiling, then looked back at the toy. It sounds so incidental. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed it at all....but I did!

Did you know that children with autism don't generally have joint attention skills? It doesn't enter their heads to share things with other people. That's the essence of what autism is...the lack of awareness of the social components of our world.

He did it again this morning-he is sharing his happiness and grinny grins with me.

He doesn't have autism. I am sure. That's not to say he may not turn out to have SOMETHING somewhere down the road, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Scream it from the rooftops-he's okay!!! He's okay! My baby, my sweet one, is okay!!!!