Mother Watching Toddler Stacking And Lining Up Toys About To Do Some Googling

TRACEY BENDINGER | Society | Contact

While sitting at a communal play area at a child friendly pub in Betoota’s bayside suburb of Palm Bay, Heather Johnson (35) noticed a marked difference between the way her toddler, Jaxon, and the other toddlers were playing.

Jaxon (18 months) was placing his stacking cups in a neat order of light to dark and small to big, whereas the other similar aged children were attempting to shelve Buzz Lightyear’s arm up their nose.

Like she had done many times before with Jaxon’s other idiosyncrasies, Heather googled if this was a sign of autism.

‘Toddler stacking cups neatly autism?’ was the phrase she googled.

Over the past 12 months searches for autism in Australia have remained relatively popular, with South Australia leading the charge.

It’s not yet known if the popularity of this search is solely a result of new mothers questioning every weird thing their kid does, or if there is some other more logical reason.

When speaking with The Advocate, Heather said Jaxon had – according to google – shown other signs of autism.

“He used to rub his ear a lot, smack his tummy and hum to himself”

Which, sure, can be signs of autism, but also could just be signs of a baby discovering his body and figuring out what cool tricks he can do with it.

More to come.