Here is Jade stacking blocks at 20 mos, 3 weeks before we discover she is autistic.

Note the absence of eye contact, and lack of sharing her achievement with me, although I am very vocal, and seated right next to Jade. These are critical early signs of autism. Jade never lined things up, as some children with autism do, she enjoys stacking objects. Notice how Jade must continue to build, even while upset that her tower falls. At the end, she plays a song on a toy, the same song she would play each time she had successfully completed her tower. Each time, she would stand back, and stare at it, while the song played, (this is adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals, another early sign of autism) but not once, did Jade ever "show" me her tower.

At the time, I had thought she simply inherited her daddy's superior engineering skills (which she has).

Interestingly, in many studies by Simon Baron Cohen, researcher at Cambridge University, is was found that both fathers and grand-fathers of children with autism were found more than twice as often in the field of engineering, compared with fathers and grandfathers of other children. This link between autism and engineering may throw light not only on autism itself, but ultimately on the genetic basis of two essential human abilities: folk psychology and folk physics.