Each week I take my daughter to playgroup as she is a social little butterfly. She laughs along and plays with the other kids, talking away naming everything she can see. A typical little girl doing normal play things. I love watching her play and wondering just how she can figure out all those nonverbal cues and start to play a game without any words, to just know what to do. All of these things are a huge struggle for my boy.
Jellybean does not acknowledge other kids much at all but he is getting better. we are working on his play skills with repetitive play activities to teach him how to play with toys and what to do with them. It is slow going. His last psych report said he was at a play level of 9-12months old :(
Anyhow, today at playgroup there was a new mum with her just turned two son and watching him every alarm bell went off in my head. He reminded me of Jellybean and how he behaved when things were just too overwhelming and it just broke my heart. I honestly truly did not know what to do. I heard her use all the excuses under the sun that I used to use...hes tired...its just that its a new place...etc but I could see in her face that she was overwhelmed and struggling. She left early dragging her screaming son out but she did say she would be back next week....
I have mentioned something to someone before and the defences of the mum went up so quickly and defensively that i backed down...so now once bitten twice shy....
I know that when Jellybean was little my defences went up when anyone mentioned that ghastly AUTISM word. I felt like they were screaming it at me...but in the end i was glad that someone planted that seed of doubt in my already doubting head and we got his diagnosis early.
Now i have to decide what to do..do i say something or not????
Umm this is a tough one, I would wait until next week and see how he is ( it could have been an off week I know shrimples has some awful days and would hide in the corner at gym class and he is not on the spectrum at least I don't think so. Perhaps next week take some pamphlets and sort of have them hanging out your bag and talk to her about Jellybean and how amazing he is but don't compare him to her son. but maybe comment on how much you enjoy watching babygirl interact and how different jellybean is to her. Stick to positives though
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