Dear all,
I am new to this forum and in fact this is the first time I have ever used a forum so please bare with me!
Myself and my partner have a beautiful 3 year old who has had a number of issuea since birth. He was born early by 7 weeks and this seemed to impact on his general health and development. He spent his first 2 years in an out of hospital. He had feeding difficulties and as such had SALT involvement. She ended up referring him to the community peaditrician the reasons for this is because she felt there were some delays.
The paediatrician stated that he was delayed in some areas and referred him for portage. After his first birthday there seemed to be some improvement he walked at 16 months and started interacting more so by the time portage visited it was felt he would not need there support, however they kept him on the waiting list.
Aa his health started to improve we noticed other issues like his ability to remember things such as car logos and his fascination with television adverts and anything to do with BT Broadband would you believe! In addition he never really played with toys or other children and there were some differences. When portage visited the 2nd time it was decided to give him some extra support.
His behaviour currently is completely non consistent. Sometimes he appears to be completely "locked in" to his own world and is only concerned with his own agenda and will just run (he does not walk') to one thing to the next singing repeatedely the same line from a song or making noises. This is just an example of how he behaves. He is also terrified of certain noises and is completely hyperactive with a very small attention span for anything not of interest to him. He becomes completely obsessed with things and you cannot move him on from this. More recently he cannot even sit to eat his dinner which is really worrying me. In aedition he has hardly any sleep as he cannot settle or stay awake.
He haa beem diagnosed with "communication difficulties" and is having support. He will Start a pre school in sept for children with additional needs.
I am do confused though because sometimea he can appear quite "normal" and interreacts in a "normal" way. He is so friendly and always says hello to people and his eye contact is good. He has just started to answer questions which he was not doing before and although some of his behaviour is consistent with ASD others are not. I am just so confused and struggling to know what if anything I need to push for or if I need to be saying "no he is fine" and see how we get on. He is constantly described as a "mixed picture" and I just do not know myself which I am finding hard. Is he just naughty in which case I need to come down hard on the behaviour.
His behaviour is very challenging particularly because he doea not sleep. he cannot be left alone for a minute because he is very accident prone and he cannot do much for himself. Do childrem with ASD have issues with hyperactivity?
I don't really know what I'm asking! I just need someone to relate to my situation of a "mixed picture" any support, advice or anything would be much appreciated.
Thanks for reading
