My ds was 5 in February. He's still at nursery, in Scotland they dont have to g to school till 5 and a half, and he's really looking forward to going after the summer. He's the middle child, we also have 2 dd's, who are 7 and 3.
Ds has always been quite single minded, but over the last few months it is starting to drive me crazy. If he has an idea in his head (like he is going swimming, for example) if we change the plan he goes ballistic, screaming and crying and falling to the ground (carefully, like, so he never hurts himself!). The same would happen if he had decided he was staying in to play with his lego and then we wanted to go swimming, or to the park. He just gets an idea in his head and if plans change he finds it hard to cope.
If I ask him to do something, he ALWAYS has to finish off whatever he was doing, even if I have asked him to stop to do something else. So if he is fiddling with a DVD box (he likes to take DVDs out of the player and put them in the box after he has watched them) and I ask him to go and get his jammies on and leave the DVD, he doesn't - he stubbornly keeps on doing what he has decided is important. It is driving me mad, I'm not sure why!
He also ignores me - well, all of us, he gets totally absorbed in what he is doing. He's certainly not got any hearing difficulties, he can hear you open a bag of crisps in another room of the house. I think some of the time it is selective deafness, his Daddy is good at that!
He socialises well, has plenty of friends, we live in an area with lots of other children and he plays in their houses, out the front of our houses on the grass, plays games with imagination in them and is very creative. He's musical and likes writing and drawing. He's very affectionate and only avoids eye contact when he knows he has done something wrong.
Lately he has started telling me (not Dad) when I do something he regards as wrong, like saying 'no' to him (totally reasonable stuff like no you had your half an hour of computer games, or no you cant have a snack its nearly teatime), and he wont just give over when we ask him to stop - he goes on and on and on. We've had to give him time out a lot recently as the answering back is rubbing off on the others.
I think he is probably just a normal 5yo, who has a stubborn streak (but then so do I and so does dh, big time), and he is starting to assert his independence. I worry that he will be awkward at school. Nursery dont have any worries, they say he can be very focussed on an activity adn not want to change but as nurseries usually have problems with children not focussing they see his concentration as a good thing!
My fear, as I have a brother with Asperger's syndrome (a stepbrother who I grew up with , actually, so no genetic relation) is that ds has a mild form of and ASD. I know I am probably being totally paranoid, dh thinks so but as I have brought it up again he told me to stick it on here in the likelyhood that you lot will tell me that I am being paranoid and obsessive!!
Please reassure me that this is normal stubborn behaviour for a little boy?