I am really concerned about my son's (4.7) social skills. He is great with adults, family members and people that he knows really well. However he still doesn't really interact with his peers. If a child comes up and talks to him he will either:
- Give a one word answer
- Avoid eye contact and walk away
He doesn't really initiate interaction with his school friends (he had been to school nursery with a lot of them, so they are mostly very familiar to him). His nursery did flag this as a concern, but said he was improving and seemed keen to form friendships. Which I think he is, but he just doesn't know how to. I feel really sad for him :(
As a baby/younger child he was terrified of other children. He cried if they rolled/crawled near to him, cried if they spoke to him and cried if they came to play too close to him. So it's been an ongoing issue. He also has extreme separation anxiety. People have reassured us that he'll grow out of it, but he hasn't.
I mentioned all of this to my other son's Physiotherapist, who said that we could self-refer to the OTs in her department if we wanted to get DS1 assessed. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience of this? I kind of assumed we'd need to see someone in mental health/ed psych rather than OT?
I think I would like to get a professional opinion on this, but I don't want to start down one route (OT) only to find out we need to be somewhere else.
FWIW he has been diagnosed as being 'at risk of developing' DCD and we had 10 weeks of OT to help with this...they didn't assess his social skills at all.
Sorry for the essay, and thank you in advance for any advice.