Recently our SALT, who attends DS's nursery weekly (and also does home visits monthly to train us in what to do daily) pointed out that DS has an almost phobic feeling towards his peers. He is actually scared of any children who approach him, and goes to the nearest adult for reassurance.
My DS is 3.5 months, and been under paediatric observation due to speech and language delay and traits of ASD. He has also had glue ear, grommets inserted 5 months ago (though both fell out last week). We have had regular speech therapy (mostly private) since he was 2.3 and his speech and language is now the bottom end of the normal scale. His ASD traits are:
- he's not interested in his peers (and as mentioned above very anxious about social interaction)
- SL delay, though he's catching up with the right help
- eye contact is a bit less than normal
- his pretend play is a bit limited though he loves simple role play
- he is very socially awkward and when he doesn't know what to do emotionally does a teeth gritting / grrrr noise and charges at the person in question and then tries to tickle them going 'grrr, grrr, tickle, tickle'
Has anyone else had this? He is fine with adults, no one has any concerns there, it's just his peers and it's not even as simple as he's not interested. He plays around them, but if any peers try saying anything to him he gets scared.
We are trying to work with him with just one other child encouraging interaction. Talk a lot about what other kids are doing, to try and break it down for him. Last week we had a lovely moment where he did on a couple of occassions say something to another child at nursery when the SALT was there. We're just wondering if anyone else has any ideas how we can reduce this anxiety?