2) Writing came before speech

My son, who gave me the impetus for my current life, is now a high school student.
Does that mean my experience with developmental support has lasted just as long?

Looking back now, various signals were appearing before my son was diagnosed.

When I was nine months pregnant, the doctor said, "The head circumference is already 10cm!"
(Autism tends to be associated with larger head sizes.)
His head got stuck during birth, and the nurse had to push on my stomach to help him be born safely.
(A confirmed case of a child with a large head.)
When I held him, he was always in a state of arching his back like a gymnast.
(His sensory sensitivities remain even now that he is older.)
He made his park debut at one month old, but he still hadn't spoken by age three.
(In the first place, he had no interest in people, so there was no need to talk back then...)

At this stage, I had started to think, "Something is wrong with this child..."

The deciding factor was that
he started writing characters before he started speaking.

Before his three-year-old checkup, perhaps you could call it a parent's desperate struggle, I was working hard on speech practice. I practiced pronunciation every day with the feeling that I at least wanted him to say his own name.
One day, I don't remember why I did it, but while pronouncing his name, I tried writing his name in katakana, one character at a time.
Seeing that, my son took the ballpoint pen I was holding and wrote it himself, one character at a time.
Of course, in silence.

This isn't just a speech delay!
There is definitely something going on!

A few months after I thought that, he was successfully (?) flagged at the checkup, and I was recommended to attend a developmental support center.
The diagnosis was pervasive developmental disorder without intellectual disability. (Currently, he has been diagnosed with ASD and ADHD.) I realized he was visually dominant and thought that just treating him normally wouldn't work, so I tried the exact opposite of what I did with my daughter. I gave up on speech practice and reading picture books aloud.

We danced wildly together while watching E-Tele for long periods. (Since he had no speech, it was, of course, in silence.)
I taught him the characters on the pages he liked in his favorite illustrated encyclopedias (NEO series). (Since he had no speech, it was, of course, in silence.) I also taught him kanji.
I completely abandoned speech practice and shifted to a life where I spent all day accompanying him in what he liked. I think I was able to do this because I was a full-time housewife at the time. (In a way, I was lucky.)

As a result, he was finally able to learn to speak, but...
The very first word he learned was "Artiodactyla." It was as if hiragana and katakana had gone missing.

That son of mine is now studying for entrance exams for a biology department. He says he wants to work at a zoo in the future. Good luck.

Honestly, I don't know what was right, but perhaps my unconventional parenting method was the correct answer for my son.