1. When did you know (or suspect) that your child was, shall we say, different? What alerted you?
Well, I'd say I KNEW about DD (10) when I got her test results! I'm not totally kidding, here, because it's so easy to doubt yourself, especially if your child is really asynchronous. But I would say the first good hint was that she knew about 300 words at 15 months--maybe 250 verbal, and 50 signs. That was the last time we counted because it quickly became impossible.
My younger child (DS6) fwiw has rarely done anything as strikingly obvious. He's stealthy. Most adults find him charming and charismatic and only slowly, much later, do they realize he's full of interesting thoughts.
2. My pediatrician has been rather unhelpful in regards to sleep... Please tell me that you went through this too! Basically, my little one is an awful sleeper. Short of cry it out, we have done everything I can think to try. I would love to hear that I'm not alone/crazy/a terrible mother.
Well, the older child napped like clockwork, woke up precisely every 3 hours at night, and slept through the night at 22 months. The younger one could go 2 weeks without napping when he was a baby, woke every every 45-90 minutes for two years, and then merely twice a night at completely random times of until after he turned 4. I went back to rocking him to sleep in the dark when he was 3, which went on for a year until we moved. He's 6 now and I merely lay on the edge of his bed for 5-10 minutes nowadays. I mean, not to suck the hope out of you, but he's a dreadful sleeper--he has a hard time falling asleep and a hard time waking up--and recently he started sleepwalking. He almost walked right out of the house at 10pm a couple months ago. I suspect I'll next be getting some good sleep around the time he goes to college.
