We had to put this list together as part of the gremlin's assessment process, so I wanted to post it here to give you all a general idea of what we're dealing with... so we don't have to keep explaining it over and over.
1) At 12 months of age she made noises, but it wasn't the normal repetitive sounds babies make (like dadadada). She seemed to almost be speaking in her own language and would get frustrated that we didn't understand what she was saying.
2) She does not wave most of the time unless we tell her to wave bye bye or something. She occasionally will point to objects, but we actually had to teach her to do this about 3 months ago (when she was 4 and a half).
3) She started talking at about 12 months gaining an 8 word vocabulary by about 18 months and then before her 2nd birthday she stopped talking, except she for daddy, nanna and occasionally mommy... and she used the word “no” even when she meant “yes”. Other than that she only babbled. She didn't start talking again until she was about 3 and a half. Then she talked more like an adult than a child using words that I had to look up in the dictionary in context. This seemed to happen over night.
4) She will interact with others when she wants to tell them about something she is interested in. She quite often will talk about things she sees on TV or a toy she likes, but when someone talks to her she will generally ignore what they say or will start talking about something else that interests her.
5) She tends to avoid eye contact. She may gaze into our eyes for a moment and then look away. More often than not when we're talking to her, or she's talking to us, she'll look at us out of the corner of her eye.
6) She tends to gravitate towards adults. When she first started at daycare she spent her days following her teacher around rather than playing with the other kids (although they are working on getting her to interact with the other kids more). She wants friends and likes being around kids, but she seems at a loss as to how to interact with them. She does not know any of the kids names (after 3 months of being in daycare) and has not made any friends yet. The kids seem very taken with her, but she tends to clam up when they approach her when we're dropping her off in the morning. We have to encourage her to say hello and to interact. When we leave she often just starts to leave without any interest in saying goodbye to anyway. We always have to remind her to say goodbye.
7) When someone falls and gets hurt, she will often react by laughing. Sometimes she seems to understand that the person is hurt, but instead of comforting them she tries to make them “feel better” by giving them things (like a stuffed toy or a picture). Sometimes she will ask the person if they're okay because she's heard me do it so many times, but she doesn't seem genuinely concerned.
8) Quite often she will be off in her own little world. If we interrupt her when she goes off like this she will get angry and sometimes throw a tantrum. Sometimes she won't even notice when we're talking to her. I can call her a dozen times and she won't acknowledge me.
9) There are times when I'll smile at her and she just gives me a blank stare, but if she smiles at me and for whatever reason I don't return the smile (quite often when I'm scolding her for something) she will get very upset and start asking me if I love her.
10) Often when I say “I love you” she will either ignore the statement, say “okay” or start talking about something else.
11) When she plays with other kids, she seems to follow along with what they're doing... for instance if they're playing tag, she will run around with them and laugh (sometimes a fake laugh that is imitated from TV characters), but won't actually participate in the game. She seems to play alongside other kids, but not really with them... like in the sand box or coloring and things of that nature. And her imaginative play seems to be limited to reproducing what she sees in TV or hears in stories.
12) We have to give her very specific directions, otherwise she gets confused and frustrated. For instance, we can't just tell her to pick up her toys. We literally have to tell her which toy to pick up and where to put it.
13) She tends to throw a lot of tantrums. Sometimes they become very violent to where she will start throwing things, hitting us, or biting or scratching herself. If she doesn't get her way, she will sometimes react by throwing a little tantrum and doing what kids normally do and try to manipulate us into giving her what she wants. But her big tantrums seem to be instigated by not being able to accomplish what she wants. For instance, if she's trying to write a number and it doesn't come out perfectly the first time.
14) She will quite often start crying for no reason. I will ask her what's wrong and she can't tell me. I will ask her several questions like “did you hurt yourself” or “are you sad”, but she can't seem to find an answer for any of them.
15) Quite often she prefers being alone, which I never found strange at first because I was the same way as a kid. But she will often become angry if we try to involve ourselves in what she's doing. She's even gone as far as to slam doors in our faces because we've invaded her space.
16) She loves being cuddled, but generally only on her terms. We've gotten to a point where we ask her permission to hug or kiss her because quite often she will become angry, hit us or throw a tantrum if we give her a kiss or hug when she doesn't want one.
17) If something of hers goes missing (usually because she left it somewhere after playing with it instead of putting it away), she will right away blame us or the cat (yes, the cat) and become angry with whoever she is blaming. When we try to explain we didn't take it or that it couldn't possibly have been the cat, she will argue with us and get very upset over it, thinking that we are lying to her. She will remain upset until whatever it was she was looking for is found.
18) She always interrupts us when we're talking, generally in very rude ways. Sometimes she will talk over us, or stick her face in ours to try and get our attention. We have been trying to teach her to say “excuse me”, but she very rarely will use it without being reminded in each moment.
19) She will quite often act shy or standoffish with people she knows and then talk with a stranger as though she's known them her whole life.
20) We have been having trouble with playing board games with her because she doesn't like to wait for her turn and she has no interest in following the rules. She will often try to change and adapt the rules so that she will always win. When we don't let her do this, she gets frustrated and doesn't want to play anymore and if she doesn't win, she will often get very upset or even have a tantrum.
21) Many times when she gets upset over something, she will run to her room and hide rather than talk to us about it. And even when we try to talk to her about it she often can't explain what's wrong.
22) Often when we become angry with her, she will either laugh at us or try to change the subject. When she finally realizes that we are actually angry with her she will become upset and wonder if we still love her, as though she associates happiness with love and anger with hate. Most often we have to convince her that we still love her before we can even correct her behavior, otherwise she remains fixated on the fact that we don't love her.
23) She sometimes seems to be developing a low self-esteem. She has been asking me things like “why am I not special” and things of that nature lately.
24) A lot of times when she's talking to us she will mumble and when we ask her to speak louder, she will instead speak even softer. And there are a lot of times when she is asking for something she will sing the words instead of speaking them.
25) Sometimes she will repeat things she hears on TV over and over again.
26) She quite often won't ask for things she needs. She will either try to do it herself or get upset that we didn't do it for her even though she hadn't asked us to do it.
27) When she wants something to eat, quite often instead of telling me what she wants she will stand near the cupboard with the door open and point at the shelf and grunt. When I ask her to tell me what she wants, she just repeats the behavior. Most of the time I have to ask her what color the wrapper or food is just to figure it out because she can't seem to tell me the name of it.
28) We have to be very direct when talking to her or pointing things out to her. For instance, when we say “uh-huh” or “nuh-uh” or nod for “yes” or shake our head for “no”, she will always ask “is that a yes or no”. And if we just point to something she will just look around the room completely confused. We have to tell her where to look.
29) When she doesn't know the word for something, she will often make up her own word for it.
30) She often doesn't understand jokes we tell and she takes figures of speech literally. Once Nathan said it was raining cats and dogs and she immediately went to the window and got upset when she couldn't see the cats and dogs. When we explained it was just a figure of speech, it just confused her. She reacts the same way with other figures of speech.
31) When she wants to show us something, instead of just telling us what she wants us to see, she will grab our hand or a piece of our clothing and drag us (or attempt to drag us) to what she wants to show us.
32) She has been obsessed with complex shapes, like octagons, hexagons and parallelograms since she was a toddler. She even asks me to make her pancakes in these shapes.
33) She tends to line up her toys and books a lot. Sometimes there seems to be order to it, sometimes not. She has one set of books that go with a music CD and one day she lined the books up on her bed in the order that the songs were on the CD and she got upset every time I tried to move them. She also likes to stack her blocks. Sometimes she makes “castles” and other times she just stacks them one on the other.
34) She's obsessed with things with spin and spinning herself. She can do it for hours... either turning one of her toys over and spinning a wheel or sitting on the floor spinning her sit and spin. Or she walks around in circles. She's even gotten irate before when she couldn't find space to walk in circles because her toys were in the way.
35) She used to walk on her toes all the time, but she doesn't do it much anymore. She does sometimes when she's running. She does do some weird things with her hands and arms. I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's really jagged movements almost like she's trying to break dance.
36) She's very sensitive to some sounds. She doesn't like the vacuum cleaner and the sound of the hand dryers in rest rooms. Those types of sounds really upset her, but it's not that they're loud because other loud sounds don't seem to bother her.
37) She gets obsessed about watching the dust flickering as the sun shines through the window. She'll use her hands to move the dust and watch it, sometimes for an hour or more. She gets so mesmerized by it.
38) There are times when she is oblivious to pain... times when it seems like she should be in more pain than she seems to be, but she just laughs it off. Then other times, when it seems like she shouldn't be really all that hurt, she'll cry her eyes out over it.
39) Ever since she was a toddler she's been oblivious to danger. At first I didn't think anything of it because most toddlers are like that until they know better. But she would fall and get hurt doing something and then go right back to it when she thought we weren't watching (mainly climbing things she should be climbing). Even now she doesn't understand the concept of danger. When we explain that she can get hurt or burned, she doesn't seem able to grasp the concept that what she's doing will cause her injury. Even when she gets hurt doing it.
40) She is obsessed with collecting, counting and lining up coins and rocks.
41) She is a horrible sleeper. She suffers from insomnia a lot. Sometimes she just won't go to sleep at night. Other times she goes right to sleep, but wakes in the middle of the night and expects everyone else to wake up with her. It's very rare that she actually sleeps through the whole night. She used to have night terrors, but she seems to be growing out of them now.
42) In the last week (since about 15/6/10) she has been going pee and poo in her pants. She only does it at home as far as I can tell... and she doesn't even seem to notice it. I will smell it and question her about it and she doesn't even seem aware that she did anything. She's been day time trained for about 10 months now... and night time trained for 2 or 3 months. I really don't understand why she'd suddenly be going in her pants again.
43) Lately she has been getting very offended when we use pet names (like baby, sweet heart, etc.). She points out that her name is Taiya and doesn't want to be called anything else. This has been a recent change. At first, it seemed as though she was just being silly about it... making a game of it. Now it's really upsetting her. We're doing our best to remember not to use pet names, since it upsets her, but we often forget. I'm very confused by the sudden change in her.
44) Ever since starting daycare, she doesn't seem to miss us when she's there or even notice when we leave. When we drop her off she always seems to be in a daze. She just walks around looking lost. She doesn't say hello to the teacher or other kids even if they say hello to her, unless we prompt her to do so. She'll either just stare at them blankly or ignore them completely. We give her a kiss and hug and say goodbye, but most of the time she hardly notices. Then when we pick her up, most of the time she ignores us completely. Sometimes she's happy to see us, but if she's in the middle of doing something, she'll ignore us. And I'll always ask, “did you miss me?” And she always answers, “no” as if I asked her a ridiculous question. When I tell her I missed her, she can't understand why.
