I really have two burning questions:
1. When did you know (or suspect) that your child was, shall we say, different? What alerted you?
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.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
1.) DS was at 10 months when we joined an infant cognition research study (just for fun/extra cash). They explained that he was WAY ahead of normal milestones of his age-peers and I should be highly attuned to his needs and enrich his environment. This was after a fMRI, PET, and cognitive assessment. Later, at 14 months he followed up with an EEG and another cognitive test. He had another MRI and EEG at 16 months due to concern for regression. Come to find out, it was a pseudoregression because he was putting all of his efforts into learning cool new tricks like side-stepping, hopping, running, and going up and down stairs in different ways. He was assessed as somewhere in the range of MG-PG, but being 1.5 he's still too young to get an accurate assessment. He ticks off a lot of the typical boxes for gifted characteristics. He has always been a pretty stellar sleeper though. Always takes at least one nap per day and sleeps 12-14 hours at night (unless he's sick or in a growth spurt) - so I can't really help you with your #2 concern.
As a Pediatric nurse, I can tell you that having a routine that starts about 30 minutes prior to the target. Figure out if your kiddo prefers a nightlight or dark, white noise, music, or silence. Do they like sleeping alone or not? Do they need a comfort object? I still have my DS 1.5y in a sleep sack, which seems to keep him from crawling out of his crib and seems to be a consistent comfort object. He knows how to unzip it, but only does it when I enter his room in the morning or after a nap. I still put him to bed with a bottle. He doesn't take a pacifier anymore and he throws the sippy cup, he just prefers to sip on a bottle to go to sleep so we let him. That's all I have to help you, which you've probably heard before.
