I adopted a child that was born dependent on heroin. Ask me anything!

I am curious how these things are being diagnosed and attributed. We had a totally healthy, absolutely wanted and expected and planned-fo normal pregnancy/birth/infancy, zero complications. My child went through the exact same things you're describing at the ages of 2-3 and had zero prenatal exposure to drugs -- screaming tantrums at the hint of transitions, physically striking people when they gently tried to get him to do anything he wasn't immediately focused on, etc.

Our excellent pediatrician basically said "wait and see, don't worry too much about it right now, just relax and don't focus on it, all kids are different and develop really differently. Keep doing what you're doing as parents, if OT is necessary we'll know before he's 4 and we have great recommendations for that." She said this after the second time he threw such a transition tantrum at her office that it was absolutely impossible for them to get his height, weight, or temperature measured at a checkup. We had to do multiple visits for several years in order for them to get all the data.

Well, when he was about 4 things suddenly got a lot better for no reason we can think of, and now that he's 5, you'd never even remotely guess that he'd once been the kind of kid who'd physically lash out at people or throw tantrums.

He's a still a super sensitive kid nowadays, but in a "everything is beautiful and I love everything so much" way, and I'm guessing that if we told him that when he was 3.5 he'd hit a family friend's teenage daughter in the face, hard, and made her cry, because she'd told him to stop spraying her with the backyard hose, he'd probably cry about it because it would make him feel so bad.

Here's hoping your kiddo turns out the same.

/r/IAmA Thread Parent