Hi all,
My son is fantastic, amazing and wonderful and has a formal diagnosis of ASD and GDD. He is 5 years old now and after following up on our concerns of regression at around 12/13 months old we eventually received his formal diagnosis at about 2 years old. He is the yougest of 3, having an older brother (11) and sister (6) and we live in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He and his sister are the best of freinds and they are ALWAYS up to some mischeif or other :) I will provide a little background info to let you know his story.
He has been doing wonderfully, and after lots of work (mainly on his part of course!) he proved the experts wrong and began to talk and hasn't stopped :) He had the normal interventions of speech therapy, occupational therapy, autism intervention teams and regular contact with health visitors and social services. He went to Segal House Mencap nursery at age 3, before attending mainstream nursery with a statement and support assistant at age 4 as he had progressed so well, and I am pleased to say he continued to impress by proving himself to be one of the brightest in his class.
He completed an occupational therapy 'transition workshop' in the summer to help with fine and gross motor skills and to introduce him to how different it would be when he moved to the main primary school - luckily the primary is on the same site as the nursery so he knew most of the kids attending. He has again been doing well and is up to speed on all curriculum, although still has some issues with immature behaviours, safety awareness, playing and making freinds... but this has always been the case.
Why I am writing on the forum is that he has just started back now after half-term since wednesday, and since being back he has been very, very quiet... he cannot complete a sentence and seems very withdrawn, and he has also started flapping his hands, rocking and spinning (these are behaviours that he had previously displayed until age 3-4, and now normally only show if he is very tired, distressed or feeling ill). It is as though we have stepped back a couple of years.... he is having difficulty reading at school and saying more that 2 words to his teacher... he is hardly talking at home, and is getting upset often and as well as his other stimming/coping behaviours he has been putting his hands on his ears (a behaviour we haven't seen for a long time which was due to noise being a sensory issue). His support assistant and his class teacher have said that nothing at school has been different and we have had nothing different from his normal routine at home either.
Over the years we have met many children with ASD and their families and have heard them saying '1 step forward 2 steps back' or that their child had gone back to old behaviours, however, we have never experienced this since his initial big regression at age 13 months....
- should we be concerned or will this pass?
- is there a 'term' for regression at an older age, as all I can find online is earlier regression?
- is there anyone we can talk to? (I am planning on contacting autism intervention on Monday)
Please could anyone give any advice on this 'backwards step'? Thanks for your time in reading this - any advice or help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Matt
