toddler with BIG emotions

hi, I have a recently new two year old and i’m really struggling to handle his emotions. I avoid spankings, but I want to be able to talk him down and nothing is working, I feel like a terrible mom.

so his tantrums started around 1 year old, they got bad around 18m, and has since been all over the place and I honestly believe he may be slightly autistic, just based off of my own research but i do plan to bring it up to his pediatrician. If I open his snack the “wrong” way, tantrum, turn the wrong show on, tantrum. etc. i’m talking like throwing his head back, throwing himself on the ground, he will not calm down by talking, holding, sitting by him, i have to just wait it out pretty much.

if we even look at him while he’s upset he will start screaming again. he flaps his arms and holding his ears when he’s excited or upset. he just seems to never listen to instructions. he is getting out in speech because he says less than 50 words. like probably half and isn’t putting words together other than “mama look” we have a bunch of other friends with kids and last night one of my friends was talking about he newly 1 year old knowing so many words, 6+ sign language cues, is just “soooo smart” etc all while my 2 year old was throwing a HUGE fit and we had all of our friends over of course, it was so so embarrassing and i felt like all my friends were judging me because i couldn’t even contain him. which my 2 year old is the oldest out of the group, and I do know a lot of this is very normal, it just seems like he’s 10x worse than the other 2-3 year olds I know. I worked with 18-2.5 year olds for over a year and there was only 1 kid who acted like that the whole time i worked there, and when he got tested at 2-3ish, he ended up being diagnosed with autism and my son acts so much like him. we can hardly go anywhere because he just runs everywhere and i have an infant also, this stage is new to me.

I just don’t know what to do or how to handle him, I feel like i’m failing him so much😭 I’m not sure if it’s normal for some kids and not others or if it’s my parenting or possibly autism, he signs a LOT of similar signs to what i’ve researched.

if you have a child who is autistic, how did you know? how do you handle the meltdowns?

he is getting put in speech therapy soon, just waiting on the insurance and referrals to go through:)

@ wanda I never said anything is wrong with him, even if he did have autism, he still wouldn’t have anything wrong with him, I didn’t specify everything that led me to believe I thought he may have autism. but, he is on a nap schedule and we have a routine. he’s definitely not in control lmao