Atypical behaviors in children with autism and children with a history of language impairment.

The team asked parents to recall odd behaviors in 35 autistic kids and the kids with past language trouble.

They listed sleep, eating, self-injury, tantrums, and repeated actions.

Then they grouped the kids by when these problems first showed up.

Two clear clusters popped out.

Cluster one: feeding and sleep issues start very early, before speech delays are clear.

Cluster two: self-injury and big tantrums start later, around age three.

Autistic kids had both clusters far more often than language-impaired kids.

Warnes et al. (2005) also used parent recall but saw no link between early onset timing and later skills.

Chou et al. (2007) go deeper: timing still does not predict IQ, yet it does predict which behavior cluster you will see.

Early et al. (2012) later counted self-injury in a large share of autistic people, backing the later cluster.

Siegel (2018) showed that strong hospital treatment can cut those same severe behaviors, proving the cluster is changeable.

You can treat feeding and sleep issues right after diagnosis, even before full ADOS results.

Track self-injury and tantrums at age three; start prevention plans then.

Use two separate data sheets: one for early care routines, one for later safety behaviors.

Atypical behavior is behavior that falls outside expected developmental or social norms for a child of that age. In autism, common examples include atypical eating, disrupted sleep, self-injurious behavior, aggression, and severe temper tantrums.

The label is descriptive, not diagnostic. It points to behaviors worth assessing rather than defining a condition on its own.

Using a parent interview, this study compared children with autism to children with a history of language impairment. Atypical eating, abnormal sleep, tantrums, and self-injury were significantly more common in the autism group.

The behaviors sorted into two groups: abnormal eating and sleeping, which were independent and tended to begin early, and a later cluster of self-injury and tantrums. Within autism, more atypical behaviors were linked to lower nonverbal IQ, less expressive language, and more severe social deficits. Screen and track the two clusters separately.