You guys have all been so helpful
I honestly feel much better and this is the closest I'm going to get to "real" answers until he is ready for grade school I would assume.
I'm just going to list some of the things I have recorded from his development. I know no one here can really tell me what any of it means, but maybe you could let me know if it sounds like what your kids were like or if it seems just regular smart vs possibly gifted range vs autistic specialty skills?
I did not go out of my way to teach him or anything, but like most normal parents I did talk to him and read to him a lot. The more he seemed to understand and remember, the more complex stuff I told him. I never did flash cards or made him sit and learn anything (even though no one believed me, lol) and he didn't and still does not watch any TV, at all. Also, I'm not going to do any physical milestones, he was mostly ahead to on time, but I don't really think that they matter all that much.
At 5 months he said mama and also said something I never figured out (airblue?) and I swear he said I love you (Iyayoo), but it could have just been a favorite sound.
By 8 months he said a few more words, basics like cat and dada and up. He loved to read books and was good at paging through his board books.
By 10 months he really started talking adding words like penguin, dragon, and a bunch of normal baby words as well.
By 12 months he had over 50 words and even used phrases such as "right there" when asked where something was. His vocab included lots of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. He knew 5 colors and 5 shapes and was pretty handy with his shape sorter. He knew his books by title and asked for them frequently. He was able to follow simple instructions such as bang on it, shake it, push it, get it, etc. He also spent an awful lot of time spinning wheels on his toy cars, something our pediatrician said was normal in 12 months olds, even those who screamed yeyyow tektengu!!!!! and boo quare!!!! at the top of their lungs whenever presented with the appropriate objects. Yeah, I was very worried.
At 13 months he had over 150 words.
At 16 months he had over 300 words.
I stopped counting words when I got to 400 on the list a month later.
At 18 months he had mostly replaced spinning wheels with lining things up, but he still loved to watch things spin and gear toys were a big favorite. He started drawing pictures (scribbles with dots and blobs on them) and calling the the ocean with fish or grass with trucks. He knew most of his letters and within 2 months he knew them all, upper and lowercase. He recognized numbers 1-10 and could count to 10 as well. He was very interested in opposites and loved to memorize and talk about them. He pretty much used an adjective of some sort before every noun, it was so cute. He was starting to memorize his books.
At 20 months he was 1 to 1 counting up to 10. He started making simple things out of Playdoh, like poop and honeydew, lol. His favorite toy was Automoblox and he would sit and assemble and disassemble the things for over an hour at a time if undisturbed. He started doing 12 piece jigsaw puzzles. He knew big, medium, little, and above and below (something random I had written down). He used his bristle blocks to make a traffic light with red yellow and green squares on a rectangle block.
At 21 months he could count well up to 20 and continue up to 100 with the 1-9 pattern. Used complex sentences with perfect grammer such as "I want to take a walk in the forest just like Harold and the Purple Crayon". He knew how to spell his name. His favorite books were the Sneetches and see how they go books and his favorte author was and still is Leo Lionni. He started to do simple math like 2 plus 2. He remembered everything, he had vocab including water intake valve and oxygen cylinders.
At 22 months he knew his letter sounds and by 2 was sounding out words. By 2 he also did 24 piece puzzles and was working on 48 piece ones (at 3 he's actually only up to 60 though), knew all of the states and could do the wooden states puzzle, learned the states of matter and talked all about how you can't see a gas, knew tons of colors like khaki, navy, olive, tan, etc., learned to read 2 digit numbers, and sang the abc song quite well.
At 2 I stopped keeping records of this stuff because we became more concerned about his social deficits and less excited about his learning. We put all of his puzzles and educational toys away for many months as part of his "therapy" and stopped teaching him things that 2 year olds "should not know". We are just now deciding to ignore all of that and appreciate him for who he is and nurture his natural talents. I wish I had never listened to them. In his workbooks I got him he flew through everything in pre-k and k level and I just got him a grade 1 book, so we will see how he does at that. He loves to do patterns and is great at anything visual and at things like spacial rotation. He reads as well upside down as right side up for instance. His biggest weakness I can see is math, I really don't think he is ahead in it, he is great at counting, but at adding and subtracting he is still stuck on small numbers and generally has little interest in it.
OK, hopefully that is enough info to get an idea whether he might be gifted or not. If anyone actually got through all of that... what do you think? Sorry about the huge post, but I have no other resources for this and no one involved in his treatment seems to have any interest in anything other than his autism. Whenever he says or does something impressive to them like naming a color they praise him for it and it really makes me realize how far off they are in their opinions of him.
Anyway, thanks again everyone, you have been a great help. I really am happy I found this forum
