Hi everyone,

I'm going absolutely around in circles on google. I know I shouldn't do that to myself but I am. I have an appointment with my GP but I want some information/some idea of what I think is going on with DS and I'm just coming up blank!

DS is 2.5 in 3 weeks. He has a significant speech delay. He has said around 25-30 words in total but on an average day he will only voluntarily say baby, shoe, car & go and will repeat yes, cuggle (cuddle) buzz, mum and probably a few other words i can't think of right now. I'd say on any given day he'd say 10 different words (voluntarily and the ones we try to make him say). We've seen a speechie once and we're waiting for a referral to someone closer to us.

I'm not 100% sure it's just a speech delay, though. There are a few behaviours that I'm worried about. He has alphabet magnets on the fridge which he will line up. He always lines up his cars. He will repeat the word car over and over and over. He'll also repeat the word shoe. He likes to watch the same movies over and over.

An examples of behaviour that bothers me... A friend recently babysat. She put him in the car and his shoe fell off. The whole way home (10 minutes) he was holding his leg saying shoe shoe shoe. She kept telling him that she would put his shoe on when they got home and he started crying. When she got home she got him out the car and he completely lost it, fell on the floor crying because he didn't have his shoe on.

Another thing that happens quite often is DS will breakdown and bawl when we leave somewhere. Whenever we go to the beach, he'll have fun we spend quite a bit of time there. We'll warn DS we're going in 5 minutes, say ok it's time to go, involve him in packing up and when it's time to walk away he breaks down. I took him to the park last week, he wanted to go on the swing, so I pushed him on the swing for a good 20 minutes. I gave him plenty of warning that it was time to get off the swing and go play somewhere else as other kids wanted a turn and when I took him off he lost it so bad we had to leave. I tried to distract him by taking him onto a slide, some climbing things & the train but nothing!

I asked my friend (the one who babysat) what she thought and she did say that there was something there. His eye contact is ok with me & his dad for the most part, but he shuts his eyes to others a lot. He will play along side other kids but won't play exactly with them unless it's things like reading a book next to them, dancing next to them. I think he is only just starting to pick up pretend play.

Any thoughts? I don't know what to do!