I will try and keep this brief but there's a lot to go through! sorry :)
My Son is 2 years 7 months now. But we first started noticing things back when he was 18 months give or take. DS eating habits, behaviour and sleep went downhill all of a sudden (although hes never really been a great sleeper)
Eating- So he went from eating everything bar pasta and pizza which he has never liked to eating 3 hot foods ( Mash potato, Cous Cous and Fish Fingers) he flat out refused to eat anything else and he would only eat the foods individually. So if we made him Fish fingers and Mash he would only choose one thing to eat and thats all. He cant cope with more than one food being on his plate and the thought of eating any hot foods or them even touching his lips makes him bork. He won’t eat bread products, buns or wraps etc. Anything pastry based he won’t eat. He will only eat Wheat Crackers. At one point he would eat breadsticks and products like that but now refuses them. He is obsessed with crisps and wants to eat them all the time. He is good with fruit and will eat most fruits however vegetables are big no no. We are not allowed to say the word tea to him as this sets him off and makes him feel stressed as he interprets this as we are going to cook him hot food. And over the past few months he has started to eat non edible things such as glue, glitter, sand, soap and mud!
Sleeping- He has always struggled with sleep from being a baby and I can probably count on two hands the amount of times he’s slept through the night, in his life. We have tried every method possible to help him with his sleeping. We do our best to stick to a bedtime routine where possible but nothing seems to work. Or what works one night will not work again. We read him bedtime stories, we try bathing him, lullabies, cuddling, tough love and letting him cry it out, we try sitting next to his bed, soft toys to comfort him but every night is a battle. We have also tried rearranging his room, changing the decor to something of his interest, getting a night light, black out blinds but we still most nights spend an hour minumum getting him to sleep. Then he will want to come in our bed usually by 11pm or 12pm and sleep with us. When we try putting him back in his own bed he wakes back up and gets so emotional and distressed and can do this several times in the night. We have noticed he physically can’t sit/lay still and will often tap his foot, toss and turn constantly. DS does not like the duvet over him, he gets very stressed if the duvet is on him and at times it can’t even be touching his body as it makes him feel uncomfortable.
Behaviour- . He is VERY particular with a lot of things. For example he will only let me (mummy) push him in a trolley if we go shopping. If his dad starts to push him then he gets very distressed and begins to get upset. This also happens with nappy changes and getting dressed. He will only let one of us do it and its totally random who he decides on the day. For a while he only wanted me to get him dressed and put his coat on. He would flat out refuse his dad doing it. He is the same with family members also. He is very particular about EVERY decision he has to make. Also he is very particular with what he wears. He has a range of coats but will only wear two particular ones and if we try putting his thicker coat on he gets very upset and actually fights us not to put it on him.. If shorts go past his knee he can’t wear them as it irritates his knee and he refuses to wear jeans, he will only wear joggers. This includes shorts- if they are jogger shorts he will wear them, if they are jean shorts he refuses. We have managed to put jeans on him on a few occasions but it irritated him all day and he got stressed over it. He is also very particular in regards to his car seat, he can’t physically wear the straps on top of his shoulders as he cries because it stresses him out and makes him feel uncomfortable. He has used 3 different car seats and is the same with all of them. He wears the straps just off the shoulder at the top of his arm, which is wear it feels bearable for him. He has started to make sounds like ‘gii' and will repeat the sound over and over. He is very sound sensitive and if there are people talking around him he will try to do things to make them stop talking. He hates aeroplanes flying over and the noise often makes him feel a bit unsure, this is also the same for our doorbell . DS emotions can go from 0 to 100 in the matter of seconds. Nothing even has to trigger these emotions off. One minute he can be happy and smiley and all of a sudden he will become very angry and can become quite aggressive and mean. It takes a while for him to snap out of this and needs a lot of support to calm down and be brought round.
He is clever for his age, he was walking by 10 months old, could recognise animals when asked by 10 months and by the time he was 18 months knew the letters of the alphabet and could recognise significant letters such as A for Archie, M and D for mummy and daddy. He also was reciting numbers to 10 and from 10 back to 0 at this age and could recognise them too. By the time he was 2 he was saying full sentences and using connective words, knew all his colours, shapes, vehicles, weather ,body parts and detailed ones such as eyebrow’s, eye lids etc (at around 16 months old he knew where his heart and brain were). He knows his left from his right and can use his fingers to represent numbers. He knows his full name, his address and can recognise dinosaurs (knows Trex, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus etc). So he is very switched on and he constantly wants to learn things.
I have spoken to his Nursery about this (I actually work there as well) and they have NO concerns whatsoever, they said hes switched on and clever and where he should be and they think he will grow out of all of this. I have filled out ASQ forms and HV also said she has no concerns but mainly because he was too young when i first contacted her. She told me to wait until he was 3. I contacted my doctor and they referred him straight to Community Paediatrics and i filled out the forms and sent them back. Its been a while and i still havent heard anything back.
What is everyones opinions? What next steps should i take? i feel strongly that my DS behaviour is not like most other childrens? i work in childcare myself so know the norms.
Sorry its so long i just need help and support :(