DD turned 4 in June and started school in September. She was supposed to be born in August so corrected age she is one of the youngest in her class. She is so different from her older sister (6) and there are some things about her behaviour that I don't know if it's just her age, personality or if there could be something else going on. I'll put it all in bullet points to try to keep in brief:
- She has recently started putting her fingers and toys in her mouth. This is a new thing as opposed to a habit that has continued. She was breastfed until she was 2 1/2 and she used to twiddle my nipple which used to drive me mad. When I stopped that and stopped breastfeeding, she started touching her own nipple - it was always the same one and it seemed to be done for comfort. I would tell her to stop and now she doesn't seem to do that anymore but it seems to have been replaced by finger sucking. She does seem to be very sensory driven and often stands on things intentionally.
- Her attention span is awful. Now that we're homeschooling I notice it even more. She's having video lessons (only short) and every minute or so she turns and says something to me, sometimes about what's happening on the screen but sometimes about something completely unrelated.
- She never seems to listen. If I tell her not to touch something, it will take 3 or 4 times until she even acknowledges that I've spoken. Today she was given an activity to do on her video class and I was helping her sister at the time so I asked her what they had said and she said she didn't know.
- She seems to struggle with empathy. She will play with dolls and soft toys and she can be loving, but I wonder if it's more a case of copying others. My eldest DD is very loving but perhaps a little over sensitive so maybe DD2 just seems a bit more extreme.
- She toilet trained aged 3 and it was more of a struggle with her. She has been having accidents since she started school but she doesn't seem to care. We went back to basics and did a sticker chart and there were no accidents for a couple of months, but they've started again now recently and she won't even tell us if she's had an accident, we just notice that she's wet. When she started having accidents at school I took her to the GP and she didn't have a UTI and her blood sugar levels were fine (there's diabetes in the family).
Written down it doesn't seem that extreme. And I have just always thought that she's a different personality to her older sister but having spent the past few days homeschooling with her I've noticed that she doesn't seem at all interested or engaged. As I said, she is one of the youngest and DD1 was older when she started school so maybe she would have been the same at this age. I do remember finding DD1s behaviour particularly challenging right before she started school so I think maybe it is just their age?
Anyway, I think I'm rambling a bit now. I just wanted to get other opinions on if this all seems fairly standard for a 4 1/2 year old or if there could be something else going on?