Sensory Issues?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Sensory Issues?
Tue, 05-10-2005 - 4:14pm

Ugh, I'd been feeling really good about my three year old dd since her dx of PDD-NOS in January. Since then her speech has improved greatly, she has been attending much better at home and in class, and her pre-school teachers report that she has been talking to them and the other kids much more frequently. Actually, every week her pre-school teacher tells me some story about how well she played with her classmates. She has also become very interactive with her aunts, uncles, and cousins, which is something new.

But, now some new problems have cropped up. First of all she immitates what she sees other kids doing. For instance, she followed a little girl around the playground copying everything she did, including hugging the girl's grandmother (who she's never seen before). The woman made a big deal out of it, which was embarrassing. Twice she has touched women's hands in Gymboree, I think looking at their rings. Also in Gymboree, she has deliberately run in to adults. She goes up to strangers and asks them to help her at the playground. She has suddenly become aggressive with other children, taking toys away from them, hitting, and pushing. Today at Gymboree she suddenly decided to poke a woman sitting next to her in the chest. She also slapped a one year old who was crying. Interestingly, her preschool teacher claims not to have noticed any of this behavior in class.

I was telling all this to one of my friends whose son has some of the same issues and she thinks these could be sensory problems. We didn't think she had any, but maybe this is something that crops up later (she just turned three)? DD also has a new baby sister, and she has been becoming upset when she cries, and most of these problems seem to have started two months ago when she was born. Any thoughts?