His toddler years were marked by his making friends only with adults. He seemed to have little to no regard for other children, to the point of ignoring them. The most interaction I saw him have with other children, was when he finally started crawling, he would go around at naptime and take all the pacifiers and put them under his blanket. He didn’t use a pacifier, so I really found this odd. He didn’t crawl till almost 1, and he didn’t speak (although he knew every word you were saying and I believe he knew this quite young), he used sign language for most of what he wanted, and eventually started one or two words, mostly on cue to get people to laugh. He crawled for a very short period of time and then went right to walking. He never was inquisitive (as in opening cabinets, climbing up on things, looking inside things). Loud noises, music freaked him out, different textures made him skittish, going anywhere that more than 3 people would be at usually started a fit. We had to leave more birthday parties for fits that I finally stopped accepting invitations. I remember one instance where they were singing happy birthday to the child whose party we were at, and then started serving cake and my child went sideways screaming because they had not said “grace” yet, and at school they ALWAYS say grace before eating. We had to leave.
Being a single mother, he had to go to day care from 9 months on; it would absolutely kill me everyday to drop him at day care. He would cling to my leg and scream. It bothered me that no other children were doing that. I cried on the way to work for 5 years. I believed that because he only had me, that he felt his world was leaving every time I left, but in talking to other parents, reading on line, etc. etc., I was finding that this was not the case.
What I was becoming aware of was that he didn’t view things like other kids or even me. His world is very black and white. If I drove to or from daycare a different way than the normal way, he would get extremely anxious and alert me to the fact this can’t be the way, we are lost. I began telling him ahead of time, I’m going to go a different way to where ever we were going and the reason why, so he would be prepared, I would involve him in moving furniture, let him know if I was going to back into the garage versus drive straight in.
He wanted things to be the same, at school mostly. One on one he does much better. School and events there is just too much stimulation, too many people talking or moving. The movie theatre was overwhelming.
At 2 ½ his Dr. thought maybe he had PDD, which is such a vague diagnosis. But he definitely had audio and sensory issues and we received therapy for a year working on those two specific items. The daycare he had been at since he was a baby had two teachers that worked well with him, and he responded well to them. One left and the other the Director of the school felt was babying him and was transferred to a different class. On his second day of kindergarten at this day care, I was told that they were no longer willing to put in the time for such a high maintenance child. I was asked not to come back.
This was the start of some real trauma, as all he knew for 4 years was that day care and those people. I had to find him a new place to go. His pediatrician left her practice and we were forced to find a new one, which turned out to be a good thing.
We started at a new day care and I enrolled him in public school (which unfortunately was half days), so he had to go to day care, take a bus to school, and a bus back to daycare. In hindsight I should have known that was going to be a challenge and too much for him. But I was unaware of what the real problem was, and thought I was dealing with some sensory issues and some brattiness.
It would soon all come to a climax and I would find out exactly what I was dealing with.
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