BiographyFelix was due on the 6th of Dec. I sadly lost my nan a week before I was due and was struggling to stay calm when all I wanted to do was grieve. The health visitors got me in to be induced on the 15th Dec. I noticed Felix was very clingy with me from the moment he arrived and spent the next 2 weeks only being able to get him to sleep if he lay on me or his dad. We ended up co-sleeping.
Before he turned one I noticed he was obsessed with wheels and things that spin. He didn't really play with toys he would just spin things. He wasn't too fussed about talking and didn't seem interested in kids around him, I started to worry but no one else could see it. He still wouldn't go anywhere or do anything without me, no one could babysit him and even his dad couldn't get him to sleep by this point.
He started walking at 10 months, which again was odd to me, and I noticed he was flapping his hands and rubbing his hands on his face (a stim). My eldest son has autism and I had a gut feeling Felix did too but people said he was just a toddler. He started acting out things he liked, he watched The Gruffalo's Child once and when he watched it again he acted the whole thing out. His speech was still behind but he could parrot things he liked. He could sing the gist of a song from a film or show he liked that he had seen once. He also didn't seem to be growing out of the putting things in his mouth stage, he still eats non-food items now. We would find him eating coffee grounds or toothpaste so everything is under lock and key. He became incredibly fussy with food, started to only eat very bland foods like toast and wouldn't nap from the age of 1 which was very odd. We would have to watch things over and over and over as he would become obsessed and he only had one volume which was very very loud.
I tried to get the health visitor to see but it was the nursery SENCO who saw what I meant and noticed he would stim in class and his stims were getting more obvious. He would flick his ear and bang his legs on the floor. He has recently started doing vocal stims like shouting or screaming randomly like tics. Thankfully with the help of nursery we got seen by the CDC last year by which point he would break toys and only play with cars or trains. He could tell you all the parts of a train and all the colours and numbers of Thomas and Friends but couldn't have a conversation with you. He wasn't anywhere near where the other kids were and he was having meltdowns at school as he's quite stubborn.
At the CDC we were told he has both autism and ADHD but the ADHD is the more prominent one and will take over as he gets older.
He's 4 and doesn't nap or sleep unless he's in bed with us, he won't go anywhere without me so school is difficult. He's incredibly smart but it gets clouded by his ADHD as he finds focusing quite hard and gets distracted easily. We still have an issue with food and he's so hyper he's like the energizer bunny! He can be very quick tempered as he's very intense with his emotions but it also means he shows a lot of love and is an incredibly sweet boy but gets seen as a handful and a bit of nightmare. Sadly people hear ADHD and assume the worst as it still holds a big stigma, but he just wants to be everyone's friend but just doesn't know how. He has no sense of danger but he does have an amazing family who love and support him no matter how much he drives us all round the twist!
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