I'm sorry, this is going to be really, really long, please don't feel you have to read it, but I have to get it all off my chest as its all just spinning round in my head and I have to let it out.
Ds1 (7) has always been an 'unusual' little boy and when he was a toddler I guess we worked around his problems without realising it, especially with him being our first born as we had nothing to gauge what 'normal' was against.
Looking back and being slightly more informed now I can sort of see there was an 'issue' from the start. He was IUGR for the whole of the last trimester, but just managed to gain enough weight for me to be allowed to go full term with him. He was quite small, but not tiny 6 lb 6 oz and still is small for his age, being a good two years in clothes size behind his age and the smallest boy in his year.
Its only since I had dd, 9 months ago that I have started to realise how unusual he was as a baby, he never cried, not even for a feed or a nappy change. He liked to be cuddled but didn't cry to be picked up and was happy to spend time playing on his own for long periods of time but would interact if you initiated play with him. He met and even exceeded his developmental milestones, was sitting at 4 months and walking at 10 months, but never went through the normal separation anxiety thing and despite us living a fairly isolated life he would go to anyone and was always happy for me to walk away and leave him. I just thought I was blessed with an easy baby and that he didn't cry when I left because he was securely attached.
Watching my dd now, I realise that ds1 never babbled like she does, she is constantly attempting to communicate and copy sounds and searches your face for recognition and interaction. Ds1 actually developed speech early, but had a lot of his own words for things, which tended to coincide with obsessions for example he was absolutely obsessed with washing machines which he called washni and vacuum cleaners, which he called vacni, and he used to call the telephone dordor and the stereo dordordor. (He did this even after he could properly articulate and actually did know the correct names for things.) He also developed an obsessional passion for the Argos catalogue and would spend hours poring over pictures of washing machines, vacuum cleaners and telephones.
It took him longer than average to start actually mixing with the children in his class. He played 'alongside' rather than 'with' for the whole of nursery and reception and only started making friends in year 1. Fortunately, he eventually made friends with a nice small group of children that tolerate his quirks and put up with his lack of social ability and they are still close friends now. Unfortunately however, he hasn't been so lucky with some of the other children and has been on the receiving end of some truly awful bullying incidents, probably sparked by his apparent rudeness because of his poor social/communication skills.
Twice last year his teacher suggested we have a meeting with the SENCO because he was being rude and arguing with teachers when told to do or not to do things and he seemed unable to remember to do things like hand in his homework on time. He was kept in the additional group for social/communication type exercises for the whole year (although we only found out about this recently) and it made absolutely no difference to him. When we went back to try and arrange the meeting both times she said "oh no need, he's fine now"!
Now at age 7 he genuinely doesn't seem to understand that the way he speaks to people is rude. He finds it really hard to understand how his behaviour impacts on other people and often says unkind/rude things without meaning to be unkind or rude. He has a keen sense of justice/injustice but doesn't seem to recognise that these apply to his behaviour as well as everyone elses. (In fact that was almost a direct quote from his year 1 report.)
He constantly interrupts other people when they are talking, usually to say something about his computer or one of his games which makes no sense to anyone that hasn't played the game. He also makes statements of fact rather than asking questions about things he doesn't know anything about, yet is sure he is right about so he will say for example "Mummy, that thing is like that because blah, blah isn't it?" rather than "Mummy why is that thing like that? iyswim and if you say no its not like that because blah blah its because of this he gets really angry and will argue black's white about it. He also constantly tells his brother he is wrong about things whether or not he actually knows if he is right himself.
He often talks to people about his achievements in such a way as to imply he is 100% sure he is THE best at everything he does, but as a result comes across as arrogant, when I, as his Mum know that he isn't really like that at all.
He has to be constantly reminded about every little thing, to the point that I am quietly going insane from repeating myself and have over the past few weeks found it increasingly difficult to keep my temper with him. Its like you speak to him, but he just doesn't hear you. So you say something to him, wait a minute and ask him to repeat it, which sometimes he can do but obviously still hasn't taken in what you said and other times he is at a loss to know what you said in the first place. Sometimes you can actually see him zone out, other times he does a good facsimile of listening.
He does struggle with eye contact as well, he finds in nigh on impossible to look you in the eye when you are speaking to him and if you get down to his level and try to make contact he is actively trying everything in his power to look anywhere and everywhere other than at you. If you say 'ds look at me' he says 'I am looking at you' but he isn't. He seems to find eye contact physically uncomfortable and you can see his body tensing up.
He has some sensory issues. He hates wearing jeans as he can only tolerate 'soft waistbands', he can't stand the texture of certain foods, he hates holding hands unless it can be done a certain way which he is comfortable and he is highly oversensitive to smells and often smells things strongly long before other people or when other can barely notice them at all.
He is a lovely, bright, funny boy who got level 3s in his SATs for everything except listening and communication, yet we are really struggling to get him to remember simple things like bringing homework home and handing it back in at the moment, thread here despite putting all sorts of strategies in place to try and help him and quite frankly I don't know where to turn for help and am at getting to the end of my tether trying to cope with this alone.
So there you have it, a thesis on my beautiful, yet unusual little boy. Heartfelt thanks to anyone that made it this far.
Anyone got any thoughts? Where do we go from here?