How does your 2 and a half year old play?

[BackOffMargery]

DS is 2.8 and doesn't really do much imitative play, if at all.

He knows what things are for, ie hair brushes, phones etc (he has had a pretend telephone "conversation"), but he doesn't really push cars/trains around and that kind of thing. He never puts on my shoes or similar like my niece and nephew did with their mum.

He likes looking at books, and sometimes he recites bits he remembers. He likes looking at my books for the page numbers as he loves numbers and letters (he can count to 30 and knows the alphabet) and he likes to line his peppa pig magnets up and say who they are. Very rarely they will have a small conversation with each other within the limits of DS's vocab.

Mostly he likes naming things - circles, squares, characters - and putting different things in different groups, or different groups of things in different places.

DS didn't start speaking till late he was about 2.2 months, so it may be related to his ability to express himself, but I am quite worried about his lack of imitative play.

How does your two and a half year old play?

Hmmm, tricky one this. My son is almost 2.10. he cannot speak but very bright. I say he doesn't speak as it hasn't afected his play. He has excellent playing skills though and always has had. He has what I would call some oddities - I do not think he is autistic but has tendencies iykwim? He loves lining his cars up in sections and colour orders - but then can play with them - they can crash, beeep beep, race etc. Does he play with his magnets once he's lined them up?

Does he show emotions between characters in books etc? My DS is very emotive, even though he can't speak - but he would not ever really like to pretend to be something else - he would not like to dress up etc but will occasionally be a scary monster. If you say are you being a blah blah blah or you can pretend, he won't go for that as he is Him and that's that - so there you go another little oddity! I am torn with my son wether he is borderline autistic or just a 2 year old who doesn't talk!!

I don't think DS would know what to do with dressing up. I pretended to be a dog yesterday (as you do), crawling on all fours, woof-woofing and panting and he looked at me like I was a crazy. But he does run after dogs saying "doggy! woof woof woof".
DS wouldn't race cars, he does push them along and says e.g. "car, red car". But we have a couple of toys at the moment that sing. I.e. a tractor with old macdonald in it and when you press a button it sings old macdonald's farm. Well, once he discovered that, that's mostly what he will do, just press the button over and over.
But he does love singing and will make up his own words to songs.
Our Speech and Lang Therapist said that she always thought he was autistic when we had an open and honest discussion with her. He hasn't been diagnosed and our Teacher of the Deaf (he is hard of hearing) said it is too soon so we are adopting a wait and see approach as they say.
Unfortunately it is doing my head in.

Ah I see. My DS would just think it was ridiculous (I reckon) that anyone would dress up Amazing what you can get from no speech! I am waiting to have that frank and open discussion with SALT in a couple of weeks time. My Husband is a teacher and i usually work in early years so we are used to varying degrees of children but I do understand where you are coming from. Does he attend and preschool or anything?

Make sure you write all this down - esp the car bit and the keep pressing the button thing - though again, it can also just be attributed to his age!

An example for you that happened ten minutes ago.

DS comes up to me with some magnetix making whoosh noises

Me - is it a rocket?
DS - no (he can say no btw lol)
Me - oh ok, is it a .....gun (he doesn;'t have guns but thought I would ask anyway)
DS - no....followed by lots of gobbeldy gook nonsense
Me - is it just magentix?
DS YES! (as in of course it is are you stupid?)

Sigh.......yet with me and DH he will dance and be silly, sometimes gets embarrassed etc

Hi, sorry for late reply, writing it down is a good idea.
We have a monitoring protocol which lists everything kids do at what age. It can be quite depressing but quite useful at the same time.
We have just moved country so it will be interesting to see what another paediatrician thinks, without having seen DS.

DS can also muck about and play rough and tumble, and be really smiley, its just his idea of playing that is a bit odd.

We did force the SALT to tell us what she really thought. Unfortunately we weren't really prepared for it!

We are into making "bouncy castles" from the hair dryer and a towel at the moment....it worrys me this is a bit odd.

My DS (2.9) sounds similar to yours in many ways (letter and number obsession, lining stuff up, naming things, page numbers in books etc). He also does very little 'pretending' play - when other toddlers do dressing up he looks at them as if they're slightly mad (though he does do some pretend phone calls). He's also a real observer - he'll usually sit on the sidelines at toddler groups etc, and would never dream of dancing during the nursery rhymes or whatever. Differences from your DS - he adores playing with cars and trains (though in a very ordered way - he prefers parking them over and over again to staging races or whatever), and his speech is pretty advanced for his age.

I went through some anguish a month or so ago about whether or not he has Aspergers (mainly because he was starting pre-school at the time, and initially found it incredibly stressful, though a few weeks later he seems to quite enjoy it). For now, though, I've decided that it doesn't really matter whether he officially has Apergers or not - if he does it's pretty mild, and I'm not convinced that any ideas for therapies I could try would be worth putting him through a diagnosis process (which might well be inconclusive at this age anyway). I just accept my little boy the way he is and embrace his oddities (like always having to negotiate how many songs/poems/stories we're going to read, and choosing everything by page number etc), and try to help him with things he finds difficult, like engaging with people he doesn't know. If he starts encountering problems later, eg when he starts school, then I will revisit my decision.

Is he your first child (I'm assuming from your post that he is)? Reason I ask is that I'm having a second baby boy in a few weeks, and I will be very interested to see how DS reacts to him (and ultimately, of course, how DS2 differs).

HTH.

My DS is two and a half too. His play is kicking balls, building with the large lego bricks, ripping things up and throwing things . He also likes playing on the slide/swing at the park.

He talks a lot and asks questions but cannot count at all (other than to repeat it if I do) and knows only a couple of letters. Neither can he sing. From my observations (st the park) they all like different things and have distinct personalities even at this young age so I wouldn't worry.

Have you tried being a donkey, rather than a dog, so your DS can have a ride .