This is not the first time it has happened; on the contrary, it already feels like a ritual. Since I began working as an educational specialist at PS Family five years ago, ASQ season always stirs many emotions. Maybe because it reminds me of the times when, as a child, I was given similar tools. Maybe because of the process that leads to therapy, and it reminds me of my own speech therapy. You can imagine: a bit of a speech delay that kept me from pronouncing the letters “r” and “l,” combined with my Puerto Rican accent, sounded heavy. After speech therapy and many years working as a teacher and professor, it has helped me a lot. And I hope that now I am, plainly, easier to understand. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I also remember that I ended up in those therapies because I felt frustrated and isolated myself from the rest of my classmates in kindergarten. I couldn’t communicate well, and that affected my social and emotional development. I don’t remember people using words with me as if I were “on the spectrum” or “autistic”; I only remember words like “different,” “particular,” and “strange.” In the mid-1990s in Puerto Rico, that’s how early childhood education sounded. After therapy, I only remember that I was never alone at recess again, that I built incredible friendships, and that some of them have lasted to this day.

But enough about my story—here’s what we came for: ASQ stirs those feelings. Why? Because when we visit programs to collect ASQs and there is a particular case, many of the descriptions given about certain children using these tools are not observations. They are directed comments about supposed behaviors, framed to sound like indications that a child falls within the spectrum. First, the obvious: the ASQ is not a diagnosis; it is a tool to assess a child’s development, but each child is a world unto themselves.

Second: yes, the ASQ can tell us if something might be going on—but only if we are truly observing without prejudice and looking at that child’s development in isolation, without comparing them to others. What is it that we are observing? The particular development of an infant or toddler, or are we observing certain behaviors in infants or toddlers so that they fit the interpretation we are making of those behaviors? I return to my story: nowadays, just for isolating myself—and based on what I’ve seen this year with ASQs—someone would undoubtedly be telling my educational specialist, “I think he is autistic or on the spectrum.” Just because I isolated myself, because my words could not properly come out of my mouth.

So, what is it that we are observing? Our own adult biases, or the detailed process of each individual child’s development? When observations are accurate, let us support the child in every way so they have the best tools for their development. When observations are biased, let us unlearn what our own perspective claims to see.