Yesterday was not a good day. Dominic's little friend, Maya, came to visit. These kids have been such good friends for a long time, but Maya moved away, and they hadn't seen each other since Thanksgiving. It didn't help that Dominic was a bit sleep deprived (for whatever reason it took him much longer than usual to fall asleep), and it didn't help that when they arrived, the dog pulled D out the door and he reskinned his knee.
But all that aside. he would not interact with Maya. At all. which was just so sad to see, becase seriously, these kids normally hold hands and run around, and play and have a fabulous time. he did a little parallel play, but mostly wanted to be in a different room. Finally, at the end, 3 hours later, he did give her a hug and a kiss, but he just didn't dig playing with her.
There's been a noticable shift in socialiability, too. If thats actually a word. Last summer he wanted nothing but to go across the street and say hi to the neighbors. now he quite literally runs the other direction rather than go somewhere new.
so I am going back and forth in hoping that this is just a physical hearing problem leading to the speech regression and behavior shift, to wondering if I'm personally watching an autism regression as its happening. Its so frustrating. Maya's mom yesterday said watching Dominic now is literally like a completely different kid than she saw even in November. He's only sporadically even engaging with someone, and he used to flirt like mad with everyone around.
So. We will see. It was not a good day.
1 comment:
(aka, Maya's mom)
I'll reiterate here for the benefit of those reading to help Joy figure out what's going on.
Ever since Maya and Dominic started seeing each other regularly (Summer 2006), they've been on par with each other developmentally, even though Maya is 4-1/2 months older. Dominic's speech was much clearer than Maya's to a point where I was almost a bit self-conscious about Maya's speech.
Now, I can barely understand a word Dominic says. Where he used to be quite verbal, now the majority of Dominic's communication is nonverbal -- almost along the lines you'd expect from an 18-24 month toddler. It is worrisome, and as a friend, I wanted all of you DevPsych folks out there to know how much we appreciate what you're doing!
I'll come back to add more comments as I remember things I noticed.
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