Hand, foot & mouth- 3 year old

[beachreader]

My 3.5 year old has what I suspect is H,F & M. My question is can anyone help me work out if he's just started with it or is nearly over it??

For nearly a week he has been off his food. Dinners he would normally eat he has barely taken a mouthful of. The only thing he has eaten properly is yoghurt. Tuesday (5 days ago) he started coughing but this isn't unusual as he is due to have his tonsils and adenoids out so often coughs at night. No temperature at any point and not massively different behaviour wise, possibly slightly more tired.
He does 2 days a week at pre-school and when his grandad picked him up on Friday they said he hadn't eaten much lunch and didn't seem well. Yesterday he cried trying to drink a sip of my hot chocolate saying it was really hot when it was barely warm and didn't eat the crisps he asked for. I looked in his mouth and saw the roof of his mouth has red blood blisters all over it-they look exactly like all the pics on google of H,F&M. No spots anywhere else have appeared yet so it would seem he is just starting with it, but then if his mouth has been sore all week could he have had it all week and just isn't going to get spots on his hands & feet?
With it being half term I don't want to socialise with people if he's contagious, but equally he's generally fine in himself bar not eating so don't want to isolate him if he's over the contagious period.

Any experiences would be welcome.

Thank you (and sorry for the essay!)

When mine have had HFM it's exactly like that a week of being off their food and something I can't put my finger on and then the external spots appear later. Mine have also had the extremes of a single blister and an entire face covered in blisters with a trip to hospital. Sometimes the spots on skin can be very minimal almost unnoticeable

I had HF&M as an adult. I felt as if I had a mild flu and my mouth was full of ulcers and felt like I’d had my wisdom teeth out. It wasn’t pleasant. And I was on holiday at the time.

Thanks for your replies. He has been much better the last 24hrs, back to eating normally and still no rash externally so unless we get an outbreak of spots in the next day or so I'm assuming he's just had a very mild case. Sounds like you've both experienced the other end of the spectrum which doesn't sound pleasant.