Continuity and Change in, and Child Predictors of, Caregiver Reported Anxiety Symptoms in Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

The team asked parents to rate anxiety in their autistic kids twice, 10-19 months apart.

They also scored repetitive behaviors at the first visit.

The goal was to see if early repetitive behaviors forecast later anxiety.

Anxiety scores barely budged; kids who were anxious at round one stayed anxious.

Repetitive behaviors looked like a predictor at first, but the link vanished once baseline anxiety was counted.

Bottom line: earlier anxiety itself is the clearest sign of later anxiety.

Rodgers et al. (2012) first showed, in a snapshot, that more repetitive behaviors went hand-in-hand with higher anxiety. The new study asks if that snapshot holds over time; it doesn’t once you control for starting anxiety.

Adams et al. (2025) followed autistic middle-schoolers and found child anxiety was the steady force that best predicted school refusal years later. Together the papers say anxiety is stable and powerful across different outcomes.

Ambrose et al. (2022) adds that these steady anxiety levels shrink how often kids join home or community activities, so stability has real-life bite.

You can stop hunting for hidden cues. If a child shows elevated anxiety now, plan for it to linger and treat it early. Fold anxiety-reduction strategies—graded exposure, coping scripts, reinforcement for calm participation—into the behavior plan from day one. Re-check anxiety every few months; it rarely fades on its own.