She doesn't sound like she's showing ANY of the sounds of autism to me. Speaking at 11 months is very advanced. My DD is pretty advanced and she didn't begin speaking until 12 months. Her first word was "chops" - she's now beginning to read, at 31months, to give you a frame of reference for what i mean when i say "advanced".

Your DD sounds completely normal, my DD's best buddy is a little boy one month younger than her and he only has about 30 words and many of them are hard to recognise for anyone but his parents and close friends, and he is completely normal too!

In answer to her question, it is very difficult to diagnose autism before 4 and most doctors will begin therapy for individual issues within the condition before actually diagnosing it as such - that way they get the help they need, and some will go on to be perfectly normal kidlets who were delayed in some areas for some reason, and others will turn out to have some sort of autism spectrum-like disorder. Can you diagnose a 2 year old? NO. In fact many normal 2 year old behaviours - not talking, not following directions, tantrums, being rigidly conservative in how they want their routines to be, are actually traits of autism. If they diganosed at 2 about 97% of kids would come up autistic!

Her daughter might be very bright but she doesn't sound it herself! Does she think the internet is invisible to those who she doesn't think will see it? And could she not even work Google to actually find out what is normal and what autism is? And the daycare/playgroup worries you have - heavens! How did the human race reach its current level of advancement when every generation up until the last 2 were raised in the vast majority by their mothers in their own homes!? She is in the most secure environment possible for a child her age, she has heaps of interaction with you, she gets to see other kids. That's the ideal. I've read the studies! And all the crap about how much you play together etc. - you cannot MAKE a child autistic by not reading to them/playing with them enough. She is unresearched and yet opinionated - if i knew her i would tear her to pieces on this!

If it were me i'd sent an email back saying something like "thanks for your friendly concern. Perhaps if you didn't want me getting upset you should have thought twice before you shared it and a bunch of very critical and false assumptions about me and my mothering with a group of complete strangers on the internet. Not THAT friendly."

Bx