@jakob2009 I’ll comment here because maybe someone else will see this. I only observe this in hindsight, so take all of my observations with a grain of salt. My son was born at 36 weeks and had some trauma around the age of 3 (I was in and out of the hospital a lot and we had a family tragedy where his baby brother died when I was pregnant with him at 7 months, all of this happening at the height of the pandemic), which we think is presenting itself as inattentive ADHD right now, but we don’t know for sure and are getting an evaluation by a developmental pediatrician. He has some ASD behaviours, but also really doesn’t fit that diagnosis to me, but I’m not a specialist (I’m a primary school teacher). He definitely has dyspraxia and I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t get that diagnosis.
He currently goes to OT and is doing really well in many ways! His OT says that he needs a lot more sensory input than we do, so imagine the feeling we get when using an oven glove to take out something hot from the oven, that he goes through life like that. We are doing a ton of vestibular stuff with him (trampoline, playgrounds, etc), but also doing things like bear hugs, vigorous towelling off, massages and sensory play like kinetic sand buckets.
When he was around the age of your son and younger, he would run a lot. Like just RUN. Back and forth usually over long distances. He loved making little routes, like little obstacle courses he’d make for himself and do them again and again. He loved going up and down stairs and on and out of doors (that’s pretty normal though). He could not keep himself clean while eating, making a much bigger mess than I’d consider normal (looking back- he just couldn’t sense what he was doing or experiencing?) As a younger baby, he had the strongest and longest lasting Moro reflex ever. He really disliked sand and painting- maybe because he couldn’t feel those materials well because they aren’t solid? He never slept with stuffed animals- would choose a toy tram or train instead (he now sleeps with stuffed animals), again, I’m thinking because of their more solid nature. When I look back, all of this makes sense if he didn’t understand where his body was in space and had that oven glove feeling throughout all his senses. His sleep was horrendous. He seriously woke about every 40 minutes from 7-11.5 months and then only an hour tops, 90 minute stretches from 13 months old but was inconsistent. Gentle night weaning flipped a switch and he slept really well after that at 20 months. As for eating- this kid is a champion. He has his favourites, and things he won’t eat like any other kid, but he loves salads, veggies, fruit…. He’s not the most unpicky kid, but he’s very uncomplicated when it comes to eating. This is an interesting part of the puzzle because he doesn’t mind that fruit is inconsistent in taste or texture- I wonder if that’s again because he just needs more input, or maybe I’m reading too much into it! He also hated the bath, but now he likes it. He still hates swimming but enjoys splashing around in water.
