A baby inside a 4 year old's body

As I sat and watched Brycen "play" this afternoon, I couldn't help but wonder what he is thinking. He continued to put his train track and train items in a line...not to run them around the track, but just in a line so he could then put his head on the floor and stare at them. When I suggested looking at books, he flipped over a couple pages and then he immediately put it in his mouth to chew on the Thomas board book. When I told him no, he started hitting his legs with it...not out of anger from me telling him "no," but because I think he still doesn't grasp what a book is and how you look at it. Some days, he'll flip pages and study the trains in the pictures before tossing it to the side or including it in his line. His jabbering...it's either odd noises that are very loud or he is just mute and in his own little world. While Aubree brings things to us and wants to show us everything "look, mama," Brycen has never done this and even when we sit and play directly with him, attempting to teach him appropriate play with an item, sometimes he doesn't even want our attention. At the beach yesterday, he would throw sand and I continued to tell him "no." His response was to shake his head "no" at me, but then within a minute he was doing it again. Whereas when I told Aubree "no," she thought it was funny and would purposely do it again to get my attention. I know Brycen was not doing it for attention...for some other reason his brain just doesn't put together his action with what I told him.

Our little boy is a baby inside of a 4 yr old's body.

When we took him to IA City last August, they rated him at a 16 month old level and when I discussed his progress with his SLP last month, he is still in that 16/18 month old development. In one entire year, our son only gained a possible 2 months of communication, socialization, and play skills! How is that possible when we spend so much time trying to work on things, he went to preschool for 9 months of that year, he's been in Speech and Occupational therapy 3x a week all summer??

It really is like having an infant all over again, but you can't just put them in their crib or bouncer to take a shower. He has the physical abilities to get into things and be aggressive towards his sister, but doesn't have the comprehension to know what he is doing is wrong like other 4 yr olds. When will I be able to take a shower longer than 3-5 minutes without the door open when I am alone with him, listening for any noise that will require me to jump out very fast? When will I be able to walk down the street without insisting he holds my hand for fear of him running into the street? When will I be able to take him to an event/activity without fearing the worst of a meltdown? When will I be able to hear him say "I love you"?

There are so many more questions I have...but who is going to give us those answers?! I hear the stories of "Sam" who is now talking up a storm with sentences once he started kindergarten, or "Sally" who can now be in the mainstream classroom for 1/2 the day without an aide...but not a single soul could predict this would happen for these two children, therefore nobody has any idea where Brycen will be in one, five, or 15 years. It's just one day at a time and we hope the next year just gets a little easier on the emotions, the finances, the social life, the understanding from friends and family that our life will always be different from their lives. Even if Brycen reaches "recovery," a family still needs to keep working on things for fear a traumatic event or change in life could trigger another regression...or even worse, something that can't even be explained could trigger one just like it did in Brycen between the ages of 2 and 2 /2. Please, please, please don't make us ever go through that part of his and our lives again!!