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When her 9-month-old baby was so well behaved, everyone praised Colette Farmer for being such a good mum.

'He was always quiet and self-contained,' says Colette, mum to Pascale, now 4. 'He was't demanding or clingy, he didn't reach out to be picked up, and lots of things he did in his first two years convinced everyone around us that he was a genius. People would say, "he's just in a world of his own", an observation I now know is heard by lots of parents with autistic spectrum children.'

Pascale was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) when he was 3.

'Initially, I was so frightened of mentioning the A-word to my health visitor that my husband ended up having to take Pascale along. But we knew something was wrong. When he walked, it was on tiptoes. Left alone, he would happily eat a tube of toothpaste. He would flap his hands for no reason and line up his toys rather than play with them.
'At 2, about 90 per cent of his speech consisted of recitations of books he'd memorised or songs he knew, over and over again. When his younger brother was born he didn't notice him at all. The difference between a child actively ignoring someone and a child who doesn't even know someone is there is difficult to understand until you actually see it for yourself in your own child.'

According to the National Autistic Society (NAS), around 1 in 110 children are diagnosed with ASD, a condition that affects communication and social understanding.
'The way children are affected varies widely,' says Phil Christie, psychologist and director of the Elizabeth Newson Centre for Specialist Diagnostic Assessment in Nottingham. 'While the impact on some children is comparatively mild, others are significantly impaired.'

And while experts are still unsure as to what causes autism, they all agree on one thing: that it's not the result of bad parenting. 'Parents will often blame themselves when a child is affected, but there's no evidence at all to suggest that this is the case,' says Christie.

By Catherine Bruton

• Next: How do I know if my child has autisim?

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