Repetitive play

[Crazymumto1]

Just a quick question is repetitive play a sign of autism?

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I'm afraid the answer is 'it depends'. A young child wanting to read the same book over and over is very common, for example, or a toddler repeatedly stacking blocks and knocking them down. How old is the child, and what sort of repetitive play? Is there anything else you're worried about?

he is 4 in preschool, he plays with lots but they’ve said he plays with a lot of the same stuff so for example cars and they have a crash, he was speech delayed however he’s caught up really well, his social communication skills still need work and he has improved a lot. He does hand flap when excited but then he has really good eye contact, he does pretend play he can read quite well for his age, he now can say his wants and needs etc. he doesn’t have meltdowns or anything like that. He does things on his terms. So only if he wants to but tbh I’ve never seen this at home. He is delayed with his development in terms of he is behind compared to others but not drastically

He is social also and loves playing with children, he says he wants to go to preschool and he misses his friends.

That's a bit of a tricky one. Replaying the exact same car crash over and over again would seem a bit more repetitive than typical; simply liking crashing different vehicles in a variety of ways, I'd have thought pretty normal, especially if he's getting a bit of a storyline to go with it (a car crash with the good guys chasing the bad guys or whatever, not necessarily anything elaborate).

That said, what are preschool suggesting the next steps might be? Do preschool know him well, and are some of the staff quite experienced? Experienced nursery or preschool staff have seen so many children that they often have quite a good sense of what the range of typical development is.

He was really behind with speech and language so he’s been having sessions he’s like nearly caught up now
he does races crashes and then track games and then trains
Weve put a plan in place and he’s made fantastic progress, it’s his social communication that’s an issue now, we are trying now to get him to say when he’s had enough etc rather than just acting out in other ways, he’s much more focused than he used to be and his understanding is a lot better than before, we’ve seen a peadtrician and they’ve said he’s ok and to carry on, she didn’t think he was autistic but even if he is he’s very high functioning

He’s also very shy and not confident in big groups so he won’t speak out but in smaller groups he will, his teacher said he is not confident enough yet
we are all working really hard with him to get him with where he needs to be
I keep telling myself he’ll get there in the end