Who is to say that being on the Autism Spectrum Scale is abnormal? I think we have more information and different ways of looking at behavior now than we did just a few years ago. For me, what counts is whether or not a child or adult is able to reasonably function in his world. In the world your son lives in now he functions well.
My grandson is now 7 and he's now being evaluated because he no longer fits into the world of a 7 yo. I don't know if it would've helped to have had him evaluated for ASD any earlier. What is, is and we go from here.
My grandson started speech therapy at the age your son is now. He's progressed much more slowly than your son has. He's been diagnosed with apraxia of speech which involves an inability to form words using his muscles, mouth, tongue. A person who cannot speak after a stroke has apraxia of speech and frequently can to retaught how to talk. My grandson did not form sentences until the last few months but we can finally understand what he's saying some of the time.
He's had major anger issues which have worsened since the first of the year and which caused him to be referred to a developmental pediatrician. This doctor has already said that she's sure he's on the SPD scale somewhere. He was also diagnosed with ADHD within the past few months and is responding well to medication. His mother held out against medication until he began being suspended from school. He's in a special ed classroom because of his lack of speech and inability to focus.
At 2 1/2 his pediatrician said he was normal and most likely just slow in learning to talk but she referred him for evaluation which his mother had done thru the school district. He had many behaviors similar to your son, including being affectionate. I had always thought that lack of bonding and the ability to show affection as well as lack of eye contact was an important part of ASD. Not so. He is affectionate and is definitely bonded with his family. What is different is that he overdoes the affectionate gestures. At 7 he's sill patting butts and boobs. He hugs and kisses over and over no matter where we are. He doesn't seem to be able to learn more appropriate ways of showing affection.
He is not shy with other kids and walks right up to them and now says "my name is Chase, what's yours? Play tag." but then he often loses interest and goes off by himself in the park. At 7 he acts like a social 3 year old. When a toddler runs into a toddler it's seen as OK. When a 7 year old runs into a toddler he's seen as the aggressor. In reality, Chase doesn't know that he's doing anything wrong even tho he's been told over and over to be gentle. He's feeling friendly and has a smile on his face. The toddler is sometimes scared. He is getting better at being gentle. Perhaps its the meds. He plays well with preschoolers but has difficulty with kids his own age. He is still a side by side player in many ways.
Same with anger. Temper tantrums are for the most part gone but his immediate response to something he doesn't like is often to hit and kick along with saying inappropriate words. His anger is in the extreme over minor disappointments which caused him to be diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder when he was 4.
He is angry less often at home and with me but we don't need to make the same consistent requirements of him that are required at school. He does obey but we do choose our battles. When we're aware he's having a bad time we can let him play quietly in his room away from other people and noises.
He does line up his cars and trucks, row after row. Since he's older he now changes the line up while at 2 1/2 he lined them up and left them. He is fixated on Hot Wheels. His cars have to be the Hot Wheels brand. He's also fixated on Bakugan battle brawlers, which are small large marble sized toys that fold up. And recently added Tech Nec Dudes and Beyblade tops. They all have being small in common and except for the Hot Wheels have games of superiority. He doesn't understand or want ot play the games, tho. He likes to line them up. The pieces don't interact with each other. He used to play with blocks all the time and still does sometimes. What all these toys have in common is that they are small, similar to each other within the toy category and when compared with his other toys very similar. i.e his interest is very specialized and his manipulation of them is very structured.
My grandson also has a good sense of humor and laughs a lot. Even tho he's now 7 he's playing the same jokes on us that he did when he was 3.
His movements are awkward. He's the kid who is always falling down or running into walls. And when he's glad to see me he still often runs at me so hard that I have to brace myself to keep my balance.
Yes, it's very sad and frustrating to have a child with autism. I suspect that the odd kid when I was growing up would be diagnosed with autism now. The difference between then and now is that there are more kids like this and there is help available so that many of these kids grow up to lead a normal life. It may not be the life we wished for them but there are adults diagnosed with Asperger's who work, marry, and have children.
Although we would like to wait and see it is best to get an early diagnosis and get started on treatment. Our family waited even tho he was very slow to talk. I often wonder if he would be able to talk better if he'd started speech therapy earlier. I also wish his mother had taken him to a developmental pediatrician earlier because in some ways I see that my grandson has stood still in his development the last 2-3 years and wonder if he might have been able to function better with less stress if he'd been understood and treated differently earlier.
My grandson is very special. He's a lover and his behavior was close to normal when he was a toddler. The difficulty is that his behavior hasn't sufficiently developed as he's grown older. We are glad he's in our family and will do the very best that we know for him. Yes, it's still scary, not knowing what is in store for him but loving him gives us the strength to persevere in doing our best for him.
Because his first visit for extensive evaluation was just a couple of weeks ago I can't tell you if they can tell at this age with any kind of certainty about your son's being "normal" or not. I strongly believe that it's better to know more about the possibilities than to be anxious as you wonder. I feel more calm in the past month than I did all those years, knowing something was wrong but now knowing what it was or how to deal with it. It's been more difficult this year because I trusted that the teacher in his special ed class knew how to deal with him but she ended up not knowing either what was wrong or how to deal with him.
Early Intervention has a good program and I do recommend being involved with them as early as possible but I also recommend getting private help if you can afford it. At least some if not most insurance plans pay for some or most of it. We're just starting down that road.