I have had experience with this and boooooy do I feel for you. I had a dcb from age 12 mths for nearly 2 years with very similar problems. What you mentioned about putting things in their mouths was a constant thing. this little boy also didn’t just put things in his mouth but chewed everything from the table legs to the side of the toy boxes to people’s hands and feet and circle time and ate every wall decor I had. No Exaggeration!!
The first telltale that there was something going on came at about 14 mths old. He was unable to make eye contact when I was talking to him. Whether it was good or bad what I was talking to him about, I'd be down on his level and his eyes couldn’t stop moving. This is a big telltale sign of being on the spectrum. It took until he was 26 mths old to tap on the bridge of my nose and say look at me **** repeatedly for him to start to focus. It eventually worked but whether it was my persistence for over a year or not is beyond me but I was very pleased when this happened.
He was non-verbal and had problems socializing with the other kids. In fact in general he had difficulties playing. He broke so many toys from biting parts off. He could definitely understand what you were saying though, and could easily follow direction, but quite often after a short time wouldn't, just because he got to that age of challenging requests and power struggles. This was when he became behavioural. Of course aside from all this he was turning 2 so mix that in and you've got trouble. He constantly threw toys. Not just small ones but big things. Pulling down the play kitchen and the grocery stand. throwing cars etc. I can hear everyone now saying I'd of got rid of him for the safety of the other children but, I knew this was beyond normal 2 year behaviour problems so I took the hazardous things out of the room and basically shadowed this kid. Yes, at the expense of the others, who really were still happy and having fun with their friends, but I felt that if everyone passes these kids off, then they are not going to get the help they need early in life which is when it makes the most difference. In the US, early diagnosis of autism for example is quite common as the children can actually have their brain reprogrammed to a certain extent. Not in Canada though, but that’s a whole other thread lol.
He would also run in circles, sometimes around the room, sometimes around the table that we would be working at with play dough or other activity. He also spent months running from one end of the room to another. For a while I treated this as unacceptable behaviour and would put him on time out as I knew he understood that he was wrong but we were talking close to 10 time outs a day. EXHAUSTING!!!
When he wasn't running, or chewing he would be lying on the floor making what I noticed to be "oral stems" These, along with all his other behaviours threw up huge red flags to me. After a couple of months of these behaviours gradually coming up and a very steady increase in frequency and severity, I came to the conclusion that this wasn't something he could necessarily control.
I had constant communication going with his mother and she was very receptive. She did ask me if I though he was adhd or autistic but I told her I was in no way qualified to comment on this and if she had concerns she should most definitely take him to see the family dr.
He was completely non-verbal till 2 1/2 but boys are typically late talkers and as a mother of a boy who at the beginning of Grade 2 couldn’t even be graded at jk level I know this can be quite common with the boys so just reassured her not to panic and just monitor it and keep up with the dr's recommendations. (my son is now an average grade B+ student after I arranged for him to have a psych ed assessment that I paid $2K for, he has been identified as having both an LD and a gift so now the school actually teach him in ways that he can understand. Sorry off topic for a moment there. Proud mum moment lol ) The dcb went for early speech therapy where the mother finally got a good talking to about how she has to stop labelling for her son as this was a huge part of the problem. This boy is 3 in a couple of weeks and he can string about 3-4 words together now which is fantastic progress.
I eventually did some research as I could no longer cope to be honest, but didn’t want to just turf them out. I found some developmental milestone observation sheets online from Nipising CFS which were exactly that. I could check yes or no if they were doing these things without having any kind of opinion which would be beyond my role. I filled these out and also wrote a report similar to the things listed above but I wrote the first part as his strengths, the second part as his areas requiring attention and then finished with how it was my number one goal to support him and his parents and help him grow in to a safe, healthy and happy child. I then arranged to have a meeting with his parents. I went round to their house to talk and was there for 3 1/2 hours till 11:30 at night....
HIs mother was very good at receiving and her husband didn’t chip in till the last hour saying that everything child Psychologists and dr's say is subjective and that it is normal for children of all ages to put things in their mouth. He proceeded to enlighten both me and his mum that he allows his son to put branches and leaves and dirt in his mouth outside because it’s normal to do that. Also went on to say it is normal just like when a tween/teen puts a cigarette or alcohol in their mouth. Yes my heart rate shot through the roof and so the calm breathing commenced lol I have older children so was in a much stronger position to politely shut this stupid uniformed man down, in the nicest way possible of course. I went on to educate this man on how those older kids were not doing it to stimulate their mouths but for completely different reasons like, to taste and to feel the effects in their mind and also because of other peers and to see what all the fuss was about. That’s definitely not something you can compare with a 2 year old, chewing feet, table legs and tree branches!!
I handed the paperwork over to mum who was in shock at what her husband had said and told her that while things were difficult at daycare, I would continue to work with her as in a couple of weeks they were taking him to a child development paediatrician and I was very interested to see what they said and I'd come this far so thought I'd see it through to this stage at the very least. I just said that I was observing some sensory and social areas of weakness.
Well, it never got to this point as dad took it upon himself to send me a very patronizing email saying how he was reducing his son from 5days to 2 days a week as I couldn't cope with him. I was livid as you can imagine as how is it going to help a child with social problems keeping him at home. He probably would have benefited from going to a daycare centre which could accommodate him and his needs and provide him with some 1 on 1 support, if this even exists before school age. I ended up not keeping him as I said that it was full time or nothing.