Ds is a lovely, affectionate and communicative little boy. He's 20 months now.
However, there are a few things he does that I feel are a little obsessive and worry me a bit. I wonder whether these behaviours might point to some sort of Aspergers of type of autism. I don't mean to overreact or blow things up out of all proportion but it's just been on my mind.
The things that concern me are:
- Obsessive spinning of wheels on toys. He sits there sucking his fingers just spinning them for ages, more likely to spin them than to push the car along for eg.
- Shaking. He holds on to things, usually a sock or shoe but can be other items then kind of shakes them in a rhythmic movement and watches them move. Again, usually sucks his fingers whilst doing this unless walking about. If you try to take the object off him that he's shaking he screams and cries and tantrums. Sometimes i'm trying to feed him and he's somehow gotten hold of something he wants to shake and I just can break him away from it to feed him, I then have to take it off him which results in the crying etc.
- Finger sucking, done this as long as I can rememeber, think mostly it's a comfort thing but his 2 fingers have become a little flattened he does it so much.
- Temper. He is quite quick to lose his temper if things aren't going his way, even if a toy won't do what he wants it to do. If he is tantruming we kind of ignore most of it unless he's really distressed then we would comfort him.
His speachis good and he can say things like 'there's the baba' and well over 20 words. He does make eye contact. He has always, from birth been very difficult to feed, he has weight gain issues as he doesn't eat large quantities and is on high cal milk.
So, just wondered if anyone had any ideas as to whether this is in the 'normal' range or not?