Hi everyone
I have been lurking for a while, so thought it was about time I posted. Basically, I have 3 children - dd1 8, ds 4 and dd2 13 months.
DD1 has been a handful from she was born - a very unsettled baby. She seemed to hit the terrible two's very early, and still hasn't grown out of it :-D
She was always hurting other children as a toddler, we were forever leaving places early, partly as a punishment and partly from embarrassment - other parents' reactions were the worst thing ever (not that I blame them really). She went to nursery school aged 3, and for that whole year, I had weekly negative comments made by the staff - I don't think they handled her well at all, and tbh I wasn't ready to accept there was a problem. The thing that still upsets me to this day is they were very negative about her 'obsession with dolls' to the point they hid them all from her :-( = major meltdowns from dd. Looking back, I cannot believe I kept sending her.
So fast forward to her school years - all very up and down, poor concentration and fidgetting have been a common theme. Dd cannot talk about her feelings at all, and appears to be unaware that other people have feelings at all! She misses the fact people are cross with her, and looks completely shocked when eventually we lose the rag and tell her off for something, she cannot see it coming at all from our tone, expressions etc. She is incredibly inflexible and controlling, to the point where she instructs others exactly what they must say when they are playing - and she loses her temper if others don't follow her script.
She also is very literal, eg the other day she was playing with a tea set, and I asked for a cup of coffee and she said 'sorry we don't do coffee, this is only a tea set' :-/ One day when it was snowing she was almost hysterical because I told her she had to enter the school through a different door to normal as a path had been cleared to the front door, and the rest of the playground was closed off - she cried saying she wasn't allowed to go in that door, and couldn't accept that the snow was an exceptional circumstance.
Anyway, I could go on all day! Yesterday her teacher commented that she has taken to starting her day with a lengthy ritual of setting a series of rubbers on her desk in a particular way - this is a new thing. The teacher removed her pencil case once and dd became so distraught and anxious for the rest of the day that the teacher was most upset she had done it, and won't try that again! She is very attached to her pencil case and it's contents, so this ritual may be as much about enjoying having her things on display, rather than for the sake of lining things up - I don't know as I have never saw her do this before.
DD has been referred for assessment and her initial appt is in 2 weeks.
Just to complicate things, her little sister who is 13 months is delayed in her physical development, she is only just starting to get the hang of sitting up, and is a long way off standing up etc. Physio says she has hypotonia and hypermobility, and suggested the need to rule out genetic causes, eg fragile X - which could explain both girls' symptoms :-(
I am a complete mess at the moment, as you can all imagine, well done to anyone who managed to get through this essay, I just needed to get it off my chest xxx