is my one year old 'normal'?

Sometimes I worry about my one year old, although I might be just neurotic. Specifically, I am paranoid about autism and PDD. She is a fairly quiet little girl and has no words yet - not even mama or dada - although she 'babbles'. She doesn't seem to suffer from 'separation anxiety' much - is this normal? She had a phase where she would 'wave bye bye' but she doesn't seem to do it anymore (perhaps she's just sick of people trying to get her to do it!). She does imitate other things I do, especially funny noises I make. During mealtimes, she rocks back and forth in her high chair, but she doesn't do it in other contexts and I think she just gets bored. If there are a lot of people around (eg if we have a party) she often tries to crawl out of the room but doesn't get upset.
In general, she is very friendly and smiles a lot: she will even 'make friends' with strangers in shops, and she seems to recognise frequent visitors (eg will hold her arms to grandma when she sees her). She also loves 'peekaboo' and other games, and will hold out toys and items of interest for me to look at. She likes kisses and cuddles, too, and doesn't 'seem deaf'.
SO: does it matter if she doesn't speak proper words at this stage? Should I be worried about the waving bye bye thing, or the high chair rocking? Or am I just insane? Please help!

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

No, you needn't be worried about any of the facets of your daughter's behavior. Nothing she is doing (or not doing) indicates that she outside of the normal spectrum. Pretty soon you will start to notice the use of single words. If you don't see the emergence of this over the next six months or so, it might indicate some language delay. But remember: normal development occurs along a spectrum, and there is a wide variation among normal children in their achievement of various developmental tasks. Also, development doesn't usually proceed in a straight line along all dimensions. Most children show one rate of development in one area (e.g., gross motor development), and perhaps another rate or line of development in another area (e.g., speech/language, social behavior). If you do worry, check in with your daughter's pediatrician and be open about your concerns.

[maya2027]

A related discussion, 14 month old development was started.