I have a 3 year old DS, only a few months off 4. He's always been a bit "quirky" but I'm starting to wonder if there is anything else going on. He's so different to my older DD, and it's hard to know if it's just normal differences between children. His nursery don't think there's anything else going on, but I would assume they would be most experienced with children with very obvious additional needs from a young age. Some examples include:
-Was painfully shy until recently. He would only ever talk to close relatives and his favourite couple of staff at nursery. If we had family/friends around in a quiet environment he would get to know them and come out of his shell usually, but in a busy environment he would never develop confidence to speak to someone even over time. He has massively come out of his shell in the last 3 months and is much happier now usually to talk to people, although still gets a bit overwhelmed with lots of new people.
-Only really started playing with children his own age in the last 3 months, though has always liked playing playing with his older sister and sometimes her friends. Now that he has started playing with children his own age, I would say he plays and engages with them typically. I feel like the reluctance to play before might have been more due to shyness rather than not wanting to play with them. Nursery have commented on how much happier he is playing with lots of different children recently, not just one or two good friends like he was before.
-Potty training was a nightmare. He was so, so anxious about it and got so upset every time we tried. Finally cracked it after lots of gradual building his confidence about 4 months ago. He still won't ever tell them he needs to go at nursery, although he does at home so they just have to take him regularly. For ages he would only go for a wee with one staff member at nursery but is much happier to go with anyone now. He still won't use the actual toilet, and insists on the potty but he has told me he'll use the toilet when he's 4!
-He still has pretty intense tantrums. He had an awful phase just before Christmas of 30-40 minute tantrums most days. This is a bit better at the moment, but he has just had a huge tantrum lasting the entire school run because he didn't want to go and pick his sister up. Quite often with his tantrums they feel more like meltdowns - like he totally loses it and even if I gave into the tantrum he wouldn't be able to calm down. Although I definitely do remember his sister had a few like this to! I feel like I avoid a lot of tantrums by carefully managing situations (e.g. lots of warnings before we go somewhere, timers etc.) and probably have to do that much more than I did with my daughter.
-We have had two incidents of him lashing out at nursery in the last two months. Both times the staff felt he was provoked and didn't discipline him (child kept jumping on him, bothering him, breaking up something he was building). They just said his impulse control isn't as well developed yet as some children his age, possibly because he has only just started playing more with his peers.
-He hates showing anyone he "knows" stuff. I'm pretty sure he can confidently count to about ten as he'll sometimes say "there's 6 red cars" correctly. But if I ask him how many there are of something he either hides his face or does silly counting. He used to be similar with colours but does now use them without being shy. He does similar with letters as well, or recognising things like types of dinosaurs. He also still just scribbles rather than draws something on paper, but drew a very recognisable person in the steam of the shower - I'm sure he knew it would disappear so we wouldn't "fuss" over it.
We have made huge progress in the last few months, he is so much more confident and social. So I had sort of convinced myself he was within the typical range for development, but today's tantrum has got me questioning it again.
His language development was pretty typical I think, and he is very good at communicating his needs and has been for ages. He plays lots of very imaginative games.
Thank you if you made it to the end and any comments/experiences would be very welcome!