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The moment a specialist tells you your child is autistic is one most parents remember in detail for the rest of their lives. What happens in the three months that follow matters far more than that moment, and it is where families most often lose time: grieving, searching the internet, collecting opinions and waiting for a plan to appear. This guide gives you a plan — week by week — for the first 90 days. It is the plan EICADD's team walks families through after an assessment, and it works whether your child was assessed with us or elsewhere.
Days 1 to 7: understand the report, and give yourself a week
Read the report twice, once alone and once with the specialist. Ask what every term means and what it implies for your child. Ask specifically: what are my child's strengths, what are the three most important things to work on first, and what would you do this month if this were your child?
Then allow yourself the week. Shock, grief, guilt, anger and relief are all normal and often arrive together. Nothing you did caused this. Tell the people who need to know — the other parent, grandparents who will help, the nursery — using simple language. You do not owe anyone else an explanation yet.
Do not spend this week on the internet at night. Bookmark two or three trustworthy sources and close the rest. The volume of conflicting information online is one of the main reasons parents freeze.
Days 8 to 21: build the plan
- Decide where the intervention will happen. Use the questions in our guide to choosing a center. If your child was assessed at EICADD, the plan is built with you in this window from the AiDi result and the developmental history.
- Agree the first goals. Three to five, in plain language, each with a way to measure it: "responds to name four times out of five", "points to request", "tolerates tooth brushing".
- Set the weekly schedule. Which sessions, how many hours, which days. Protect this schedule the way you would protect school.
- Ask for the home program in writing. What you do at home between sessions is at least half the intervention.
- Cut screen time, starting now. It is the single change that helps every plan work better.
- Check hearing if it has not been checked. It is quick, and hearing differences are common and easy to miss.
- Start a simple notebook or app to record what you observe: new words, new skills, difficult moments and what preceded them. It will become your most valuable tool.
Days 22 to 45: set up the home and the routine
Young autistic children learn best in a predictable environment with clear routines and many short bursts of interaction. Make the day predictable: the same order of events, simple pictures of the routine on the wall if the child responds to them, and warnings before transitions.
Create a play space with a small number of toys that invite interaction (bubbles, cause-and-effect toys, simple puzzles, a ball) rather than toys that entertain a child alone. Rotate them. Get on the floor for fifteen minutes several times a day and follow the child's lead: imitate what they do, name what they look at, wait for them to look at you, celebrate every attempt at communication.
Address sensory needs: reduce what overwhelms (labels, noise, bright light) and provide what the child seeks (movement, pressure) on a schedule. Our guide to sensory processing gives the details.
Protect sleep and eating. A tired or hungry child cannot learn. Fixed bedtimes, a calm hour before bed with no screens, and regular meals do more than they appear to.
Days 46 to 75: look after the family
By now the routine is running and the initial shock has passed. This is when exhaustion arrives. A child in an intensive plan needs parents who can sustain it for years, not weeks, so the family's wellbeing is part of the plan, not a distraction from it.
- Divide the work explicitly between the adults in the household, including the driving, the home program and the nights.
- Involve siblings in play with the child in short, successful ways, and protect time for them that has nothing to do with autism.
- Find one other parent who is a year ahead of you. Their perspective is worth more than most articles.
- Sort out practical things: nursery or school placement, any paperwork needed for support in your country, the budget for the year.
- Take a break from the search for new methods. The plan needs three months to show what it can do before anything is added.
Days 76 to 90: measure, review and adjust
At the end of the first three months, sit down with the team and look at the data: the goals you set, the notebook you kept, the measures the specialists track. Ask three questions. Which goals have moved? Which have not, and what will change? What are the next goals?
Most children show clear movement on at least some goals by 90 days — a response to name, a first point, a longer stretch of play, calmer transitions. If nothing has moved at all, that is important information: the plan should change, the hours should be reviewed, or the assessment should be revisited. At EICADD this review is built in, and the plan is adjusted from the child's own data rather than from a fixed program.
Then set the next 90 days. Progress in autism is measured in seasons, not weeks, and a family that reviews and adjusts every quarter for two years arrives somewhere very different from one that waits for the plan to work on its own.
What to hold on to
Your child is the same child they were the day before the result. The result did not change them; it changed what you know, and what you know lets you act. Early, consistent, well-measured intervention changes trajectories, and the years between two and five are when it changes them most. You are not too late, you did not cause this, and you do not have to do it alone.
Frequently asked questions
Should I tell family and friends straight away?
Tell the people who will be involved in the child's care in the first week, using simple language. Everyone else can wait until you are ready. You will find that most people respond better than you fear, and that the ones who do not are not the ones who matter.
How soon should sessions start after the assessment?
Within two to three weeks. There is no benefit in waiting, and the home program — floor play, following the child's lead, removing screens — can start the day after the assessment.
What if I disagree with the result?
A second assessment with a different method is reasonable, and an objective measure such as the AiDi session is useful precisely because it does not depend on the assessor's impression. But do not let the search for a second opinion delay the home changes that help every child regardless of the label.
Will my child talk, go to school, live independently?
Nobody can promise outcomes for an individual child, and anyone who does should be treated with caution. What the research does show is that early, intensive, well-designed intervention substantially improves language, learning and independence for most children, and that starting before three gives the largest gains.
Worried about your child's development?
A single AiDi session takes 6.5 minutes, needs no speech from your child and can be done from four months of age. Book an assessment in Ajman or Amman, or an online consultation.
