To ask your experience of GDD, ASD AND SPD

[rabbitheadlights]

posting for traffic and I will remove if it's not appropriate to be here but

yesterday ds's portage nursery nurse told us we should apply for dla, until this point I knew ds 23 months had some sort of developmental delay, but I had thought that ds would eventually catch up with his peers. I had purposely stayed away from Google as I have anxiety anyway and Google is not good for it. However the filling in of the forms and some of the things she said have caused me to realise, this is not just simply a delay and that his life is going to look very different to that of his peers and indeed his siblings. 3 things were mentioned GDD which I knew about, ASD which had been mentioned but as possibility and SPD which they seem to believe is his biggest issue.

My question is, in reality what will life look like for him? After reading up on SPD last night im worried, does that mean he is living in a constant state of anxiety!? How do I help him??

I'm sorry I can't help you more, as I say my son is older and it was mainly send educational law I was looking into for him.
But I will say read everything you can, such as the send code of practice, really educated yourself on what provisions he should be getting and the laws surrounding them, and push for him to get them. You will always be the best advocate for your child.

All these terms are very broad ,and nobody can tell you what your child's future will look like in five years time ,my son was non verbal at two and still is at ten ,but this will not be the case for other children ,there is quite a few Facebook groups for parents if children with autism and there is a Facebook group called "My child has global development delay " which you may find useful.

Thanks everyone I don't really know what it is I'm looking for really just trying to understand and get my head around it all really

Every child is different, absolutely. DD1 had key words at that age, but her expressive speech was unusual. She would communicate effectively, but in her own way. For example, she'd say 'I want bowl eat' for 'I'm hungry' or 'it pink and it go wee' for slide or 'chicken and handle' for satay stick. So we could work out what she wanted.

Have you tried makaton? It's a basic sign language and can really ease frustrations.

I have a 7 year old who had all 3 of those diagnoses at 3 years old. He is generally doing well, he is a happy boy, he manages his own sensory needs pretty well (chew toys, lots of breaks, standing on his head etc). He has recently been diagnosed with a chromosomal abnormality (some rare syndrome) and we are waiting to see what that means. He talks well, accesses mainstream school with lots of friends. He is a little below age-related expectations (although he is Summer born and he started school at 5 so is arguably in the year below). I do a lot of extra curricular work with him. I do not think SPD always equals hidden anxiety but yes it can prevent him learning. I wouldn't worry too much about hidden anxiety, I think generally it is easy to tell if your own child is distressed even if they cannot talk (working out what the problem is is a different question).
To me communication has always been the key - the quicker you can get him to communicate with you the better. I found the "more than Words" course they put on for under 5s in my area and "More than Words" book invaluable. And yes you should start to do as much as you can with him now, as early as possible and not wait for it to get better on its own. The one thing I would say it feelslike a life sentence when it first dawns on you but actually we have a lovely life, with my lovely boy and it doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds.