Hello, everyone. Sorry if this gets long...

I am the mother of a 3.5-year-old son who is in the process of being evaluated for SPD. He is extremely coordinated and strong, highly verbal, ahead cognitively in all areas. But... he is bonkers off the wall. He has never had issues surrounding food, noise, light, bathtime, etc. he PTed very easily and on the earlier end of the spectrum for a boy, but he was "The Biter" at daycare until this past summer. He is still very physical with the other kids. He gets in their faces, pushes, pinches, hits, etc. Sometimes it's because he's mad (had an incident today where he pinched a friend and left a bruise because the friend took a toy from him), but more often he is just being silly, like drumming on someone's back while they are in line or running and crashing into someone during free play....but 10x a day.

When we were struggling with the biting, a behavioral therapist the daycare retained said he was likely bored and the behavior would improve when he moved up to preschool. It did. The biting stopping completely within two weeks of being in the new room. But the last few months he has acted out physically in other ways that the teachers say are "too much." They say all kids will do some of the things he does, but he does it so much more often and more intensely. I know he is high energy and can be dramatic at times, but when he's home with me and his brother or playing with small groups of kids (like my friends' kids, his cousins, etc.) he does fine. He also did GREAT last year when I was on maternity leave and he was only going to daycare 3x a week.

I'm just feeling helpless and lost. Is there a real issue with my son or does he just have a bad case of being a three-year-old boy in a world where three-year-old boys are expected to act like five-year-old girls in the classroom? I don't deny that he has some sensory seeking behavior, but I questions whether it really is so "bad" that it requires intervention? The fact that he thrived when only in daycare part-time makes me think he's just too immature to be in a full-time classroom setting and if I was in a position to be a SAHM he'd be able to build up his stamina for that kind of thing by the time he got to 1st grade. I can't SAH, so we have to find ways for him to cope with being in daycare FT. Is the ticket to that OT? Or what?

I am so stressed all.the.time and so tired of picking him up each day and hearing a litany of things he did "wrong". I have done a number of things to try to help (compression undershirt, doing lots of tossing him around before school, pep talks, reiterating simple rules for school behavior every day) and it makes no difference. My next step is eliminating dairy over Christmas break and introducing Kids Calm vitamin/magnesium supplements. We meet with the public school team that evaluated him the first week of January for their recommendations, although they have already said he doesn't qualify for OT/preschool with them because he is so cognitively advanced.

It does sound like he is very overstimulated. Are there any other daycare options that would be a smaller group and more low key for him? A babysitter in a home maybe?