Strange behaviour - can anyone suggest why DS is doing these things?

[somethingiswrong]

I'm sorry this is so long but I don't know what's relevant.

5 year old DS is worrying me. On a good day he's a wonderful, lovely boy - polite, happy, chatty, cheerful and bright. On a bad day he's emotionally labile, melting into floods of tears over minor problems, having tantrums, and behaving impulsively. He fidgets and twitches, flaps his hands and legs around and finds it impossible to listen properly. If you physically hold him and look at him because something needs to be said to him, he is screwing up his eyes and straining to understand but you can see it isn't sinking in at all, like it just doesn't register. You can tell him not to do something and he'll seem to have heard and then immediately do it again, and when admonished he'll say he forgot what I said and I believe him.

I believe there's a link to illness - he often has bad breath, usually before a period of this behaviour, and he has dreadful sweats at night, sometimes soaking through his pyjamas. We've generally attributed this behaviour to tiredness in the past but I'm not so sure now. He can wake up some mornings after 12 hours sleep and be as distracted and absent in the morning as he might have been the night before.

He's generally bright and extremely articulate and if anything he gets a hard time from us because we have high expectations of him in terms of behaviour and his abilities - we know he is capable of something but it's as if he loses that ability on a bad day. He probably had reflux, spending most of babyhood in an overtired screaming fit, and didn't get the regular good quality sleep that we felt he really needed until he was diagnosed with sleep apnoea and had an adenotonsillectomy last year. Sleeping improved really quickly and things were generally much better, but over the winter he had an awful chronic cough which is being treated as asthma. His preschool then raised concerns with me because he was so tearful and exhausted some days. He's suspected to have mild glue ear and will be reviewed by audiology in 3 months. We're hoping for a paediatrics appointment but so far nothing and the referral was made 2 months ago.

Does this ring any bells with anyone? I've got a whirl in my head of intolerances, ASD, immune-mediated problems and worse :(

Bump

I would take him to your GP and refuse to leave until he/she had agreed to do something. Trust your instincts, most mothers are right when they suspect something is wrong.

I would second going to gp, it would better to get an opinion from an expert who can examine your dc.

I think the first thing to do it to rule out any sort of chronic infection or medical condition by a visit to the GP. Don't allow them to fob you off. You are clear that there is a problem so make them take you seriously. I have heard of people being diagnosed with mental health problems when their behaviour was caused by kidney infections so make sure he is thoroughly checked over.

Then I would consider sensory processing difficulties which can be much worse some days and almost non-existent on good ones.

After that maybe anxiety but you'd probably already be aware if that was an issue.

I'm sure someone else will be along with some more ideas soon.

Bad breath, how? Is it sickly sweet? Do he seem hypo active during the phases? Then crashing? By any chance if I am right?

get thee to the GP tommorow morning. Go and sit in the office at 8 am ask to be seen urgently that day.

Thanks everyone, very much. He's our eldest so I've no idea what's normal and what's not.

He's been in and out of the health centre countless times - first with his sleep difficulties (it's the HV I've got to thank for sending me back to stamp my feet about his tonsils), then with the coughing/asthma, and than again when the preschool raised concerns. They referred him to SALT, because apparently although his speech is excellent they have found it is often a route to more investigations when the GPs are useless, and indeed the SALT did refer him on to audiology and paediatrics.

I think perhaps I do need to go back to the GP again, and if no joy then perhaps the HV again? DH may be a problem because I think he's confident it's just tiredness, but I'm not buying that explanation now.

His breath is foul at times, just that throat-infection smell. He's not diabetic, he had full bloods inc glucose a couple of weeks ago and all was fine. :)

But did they also do the glucose challenge, where the bloods pulled on a good day?

Might not be diabetes but there are a couple of other options.

Get back the GP; stamp and stomp and get a rapid referal to a paed. What you are describing is not normal.

Ds' breath has a very distinctive smell when he's got an ear infection. He suffers from glue ear, has had grommets, which helps. He also does get night sweats with mild ear infections too.

No challenge, and he was coming down with a cold but not unwell when the sample was taken.

He's had ear infections twice, both short-lived and very painful. His ears are frequently very waxy and his hearing is definitely dodgy. He occasionally complains of sore ears, but then he occasionally complains of a lot. Usually sore tummies (mesenteric adenitis?) but also sore legs and a sore back. I'm a meanie and try to ignore him because I don't want to get him into attention-seeking in the form of random ailments!

I've just shown DH the checklist on a dyspraxia website and we've discussed some of the stuff I've mentioned already, and on that basis he's agreed that we need to go back to the GP. Your posts today have been extremely helpful, thank you.

Ds has glue ear and it affects his breath a lot.

The night sweats would concern me alot