Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi hoping someone has some advice. my son is 4 and my first baby so in all honesty I never really noticed anything unusual about his behaviour. It was brought to my attention when he was about 1 and a half that there may be something's I should mention to his health visitor. I passed on the childminders concerns mainly about his social interactions listening and speech and we got hearing tests and speech therapy etc I wasn't overly concerned as we took on board the advice by the speech therapist and his language developed. Since starting nursery I can see theres a lot of differences in him other children and the nursery/school have been great with helping him.
Hes so intelligent and conforms really well as the nursery say but I am finding it all abit daunting I am stil getting my head around the fact he processes things very differently and it's hard because my partner is like yeah I said that all along and people are now being honest about concerns that they had which Just makes me feel like a crap mum for not recognising behaviours I just seen them as quirks. Today was a bad day and I need some advice on implementing discipline and setting boundaries because at end of day he's still a 4year that won't listen to his mummy and is pushing the boundaries it's getting to a point I dread talking him out because he plays up and I don't really know how is best to deal with it because the traditional methods don't seem to work for very long.
Here is a link to the EarlyBird Programme and you should be able to find a centre near you offering a support programme. I am not sure if you need a diagnosis to access this - best talk to speech therapist since s/he is already involved (speech and language team who deal with social communication): http://www.autism.org.uk/earlybird
EarlyBird (under five years) and EarlyBird Plus (ages four-eight) are support programmes for parents and carers, offering advice and guidance on strategies and approaches for dealing with young autistic children. Both programmes work on understanding autism, building confidence to encourage interaction and communication and analysing and managing behaviour. The EarlyBird Healthy Minds programme is a six-session parent support programme to help promote good mental health in autistic children.
My son mostly played alone and didn't really communicate with classmates apart from a select few over the years - funnily enough there are queries now (in their 20s) as to whether the people he chose to be friends with are also on the spectrum.
BWs