As A Preschooler!

When Our Little Angel entered the years between ages 3 and 5 the tatters became a little more clear to us - although to the outside world he was still a cute, slightly mischievous little boy. But we began to notice that his language skills just were not quite as proficient as we thought they ought to be - all though at first we decided it was because Big Brother Angel was doing all the talking for him. However, we never had one of those moments when he all of a sudden just start rattling off whole sentences. But not only did he seem to have a smaller vocabulary than we thought he should, but about two thirds of the time what he was trying to say was unintelligible - even for mom who was with him 95% of the time. Other adults - including his preschool teacher could not understand him. He was eventually referred to a speech therapist - but she could not identify anything specific that was the problem. In fact on the three occasions that we saw her - OLA (our little angel) spoke fairly clear. But the problem persisted and he was referred to a speech therapist once again in Kindergarten - with the same result.
 Beyond the speech came the incredible melt downs/temper tantrums of epic proportions. Other parents kept telling me it was normal for kids this age to have temper tantrums. I kept asking if it was normal for them to last two hours at a time. But , alas, my concerns kept getting brushed aside by teachers and medical professionals - especially because they did not usually see this behavior. It had not yet made its way outside the walls of our families' home. But that was because I was quickly learning how to avoid taking OLA anywhere that I didn't feel like I needed to. 
Along with the melt downs came the kicking, hitting , biting, and crying - at this point usually aimed at BBA(big brother angel) and more often than not completely unprovoked. He was also very destructive to property not belonging to him - also usually BBA's.
 Then we noticed his difficulty with number recognition, counting, ABC's and their sounds, and names for the days of the week as well as the order they go in. Sometimes he seemed to know most of them but later it was like he had never learned them.
 About this time his refusal to comply with a no response increased - no was not ever intended to stop him from doing something he wanted - or so it seemed. He would not respond to verbal warnings when in dangerous situations' even if the warning was given over repeat  occurrences of the same behaviour. It didn't stop even at the loss of privileges/possessions. i.e. - losing his bike after riding into the road with out looking for cars or other dangers. And it didn't apply to sleds or skateboards if the bike was unavailable.
 Again we mentioned this to people such as teachers and medical professionals. But where told that he was just being a little boy, or he was just very strong willed, or my favorite , he was younger than most doctors wanted to evaluate for ADHD/ADD (or anything else for that matter), just be patient they said - he will most likely grow out of it.  No one mentioned FASD, and no one would tell us what to do if he didn't grow out of it. So we continued to wade quietly through the rising waves - sometimes adrift in a sea of preschooler caused storms.