It is so so hard to know. I'm sure I've made a million mistakes when deciding if it's SPD related or my son being a kid.

My husband does not tolerate backtalk, or being "fresh." Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way to explain this concept to our older son. He just doesn't seem to get it. Hubby will give him a timeout for backtalk. Then he cries that he doesn't understand what he did wrong, that teachers at school want you to answer back when they talk to you. I try to explain that replying and talking back are different but I'm not finding a clear explanation. This is something we're still working on.

Once you've settled into the diagnosis and therapies, you'll start to see when they can't help what they're doing, can see that they are reacting to something in their environment. Sometimes you won't know what the trigger was but you'll still know.

With my older son, a light touch sometimes caused a fight response in him and he would punch that person. I would have to be on constant watch when other children were around and jump in quickly if I saw it was about to happen. Remove him from the situation ASAP. Luckily, as he has gotten older, it doesn't happen nearly as often.

For me, it's just learning his triggers and how he responds to those. Then learning to prevent a problem before it happens.