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May 2022 Babies 🇬🇧

I feel like nursery isn’t really listening

Okay so my sons nursery is overall amazing I honestly can’t fault them, he loves it there.

However, I’ve watched my sons behaviour for a while now and there’s something definitely different with him to other children,

So for example he can’t play quietly he’s extremely loud ( nursery even said this ) and when asking nursery they suggested a hearing test.

He has been loud since he was a baby, used to constantly babble from being a newborn but when he got to 4 months they turned into screaming and shouting , but not in distress or anything , it was just him babbling 20x louder than necessary lol. And this has never calmed down, he’s extremely loud.

He often can’t process instructions very quickly, so for example we went to football club and the man asked the children ( all age 3/4 ) to kick the ball in and out of the cones and come back, they all followed instructions immediately, he didn’t, the man repeated himself a further 3 times and he just stood there in his own little bubble. The man called them all back once they’d finished/almost finished and said “ let’s all listen to instructions please “ and told them to do it again and the same happened, I had to step in and guide him how to do it in the end, this happened 3 times.

He gets upset and frustrated very quickly, he’s impulsive, he’ll often hit his sister or hurt her if she’s not doing things his way or if she’s bothering him, I’ll tell him off, he’ll apologise as he knows it’s wrong and then not even a minute later do it again, so I’ll remove a toy, sit him on the step, he’ll come and apologies, and then repeat. This is literally all day everyday. At some point a child would learn not too, it’s almost like he can’t help himself but to do it.

He can’t self soothe, everyone’s pressuring me “ he’s 4 he shouldn’t have a dummy “ but he will scream and get distressed and will NOT calm down without it and nothing else I offer can help him either.

He can’t sit still, easily bored and distracted when we’re playing, in meal times he’s often up and moving around which leads him to not eating his dinner.

Overall he’s a really clever boy, he’s extremely chatty, amazing speach no issues around that it’s the behaviour side of things.

these are just very little examples of some of the things were struggling with right now,

Today I spoke to a a HV and they’ve asked me to directly ask nursery to do observation and put him forward for an assessment for ADHD.

Now nursery rang me after I forwarded on the message and they told me ;

We don’t usually do anything for children until they are around six since a lot of children do these things, he seems fine when he’s here and we have no concerns.

They then went onto say he does struggle with listening and attention, sitting doing activities, he’s very noisy and I should book him a hearing test ( said this multiple times, the hv even told me they’d say this ) said that while he is not an introvert and he’s confident, he’ll prefer to be with the adults rather than other children. He can’t share ( standard children really but by 4 you should be able to a little more without there being havoc ) and a few other bits. They said they can put him forward for an observation and send home paperwork to fill but by that point it made me doubt if what I’m seeing is even real.

Now I understand these behaviours are completely normal in children, however his are regular occurrences and getting harder each day. And what confused me most was saying he seemed fine and then listing exactly the same issues I’m noticing at home

I just felt like I’d made something out of nothing and now I’m doubting contacting anyone at all. My main concern is I don’t want him to struggle in school or be misunderstood when he starts in September.

Not really sure what I’m expecting, maybe some similar experiences with nursery