I feel more and more anxious for my DS who's nearly 3.5.
Looking at him in the library while smaller children could have conversation with the librarian, participate the story telling and play games at ease, simply because they can (understand and express), I felt extremely sad for him.
He's always a bit quirky, but he's a very happy boy and relatively well behaved with few tantrums. He's always one of the favourites of the teachers in the nursery. Our instincts have been telling us all along that he's a smart child, but in reality all his development milestones emerged later than others and his behaviour level won't match his peers at a intellectual level. He's a little boy, but when I saw children of his age how they speak, things they do/want and how they engage with others (children/adults), I know he's at least a year behind.
He started talking late too. By 2 years old, he could not speak more than 10 words. We've been hoping it would catch up naturally and he would get there eventually on his own. But it didn't happen. It has improved, but very very slowly. Even after he started nursery last October, his vocabulary only improved on monthly basis, not daily or weekly. By now, he can probably use about 60-70 words, but on a daily basis he manage to get away with as little as roughly 30 words. It's not that he can't copy, but it seems that he's just not interested. He would copy once or twice if he's asked to do so, but he has no motivation to use those new words spontaneously (or occasionally). As I said, he has a quirky personality. You can't force him to do things he doesn't want to (not without big efforts). If he's not interested in learning new words, then he's not interest. I'm also not sure how much he could really understand. He definitely pretends he understands sometimes, and he also don't hear what you say all the time and he sometimes would deliberately choose to ignore you, so no matter how you want to engage, he just ignore you.
We only started requesting for help through NHS around the end of last year. It progresses very slowly. It seems his hearing test concluded he has enough hearing capability for normal speech development. I don't think he's autistic (98% sure because of his quirk). We are put in the waiting list for assessment which would not happen until summer. So we are taking him for a private assessment next week.
More and more, I feel really sad. There are some many interesting things about the world he could learn, but he can't as he doesn't have the vocabulary to understand. And he's only a year and a half away from reception year. I'm worried now if in the end he has to go to special school, instead of the main stream schools as a normal child. My instinct still don't believe it, but the reality seems gradually leaning towards a not so normal childhood far behind what his peers have enjoyed and achieved.
Before he was born, I wished he was a smart child. But now, I just wish he's a normal little boy...
Sorry for such a lengthy post. But really want some comfort and reassurance...