Regressive behaviour

My AS has only been home 2.5 years. He has gone through regression at various times. He still sometimes asks to be feed, crawls around and has just started squealing! It has lessened but is still there. Not so long ago he found his cousins' dummy and asked if he could have it. I said he could but he was feed up with it a couple of minutes later. It seems at times of stress he will either be very defensive and stand offish or we have the baby talk and lots of regression.

Youngest AS 9 still likes me to give him a drink out of a sports bottle for a couple of minutes when he gets into bed. He talks in a baby voice on occasions. However his independent behavior is increasing greatly without any nudging from me. Eg he'll take himself to bed by himself now on occasions and I go up 5 mins later. Or he'll clean his teeth at bedtime by himself. I've just gone with it if it's felt natural and comfortable.

Little Prince wanted a bottle before bed up to being 6 or 7. And he still prefers me to bath him and dry him afterwards, although he does agree that he has to wash/dry his own bits now he's 10.
Its never bothered me and he needed it at the time, then it gradually petered out.

connect4, I have been to a Holly Van Gulden conference this weekend and it was very clear that our young people need to fill their developmental gaps in order to move on. That means, essentially, they need to experience all the nurture that a healthy baby would go through before they can move forward. This doesn't mean you need to do anything weird, what it does mean is that you need to provide lots and lots of little sensory experiences in a non-threatening way.
This would include all the things like swaddling, rocking, feeding, even just being responded to every time they call for you, the way a newborn would!
To help with moving forward, key points are to develop the concept of object permanence, as experienced by healthy 18mth-2yo toddlers. You can help this playing lots of seeking games (peek-a-boo, hide the coin, etc), and by providing transitional objects(either a soft toy, blanket square or similar - good for smell/touch - or ideally a photo of you and them.
Personally, I have found the really helpful activities have been rythm based - patting, rocking, swinging etc. DS is almost 15, but still loves an opportunity to sit on my knee in a rocker from time to time. When my back is up to it, he adores swinging in a blanket. When he was younger, he loved to suck his thumb and be babied.

Yes, both DD's have wanted to be rocked back and forwards (I still do this with all of them, it's wonderful, especially as I have an actual rocking chair), bottle fed their bedtime drinks, cradled, DD2 used to like being fed with aeroplane noises and wanted a dummy.

With DD2 I'd say it started when she was about 9/10 (I just don't think she felt safe enough when she first moved in to actually express this, since it really started coming out when we had therapy), and carried on mostly till she was about 14/15. At 17 she still loves being rocked and cradled but the bottles and baby noises/talk and aeroplane noises have fully stopped.

DD1 was really independent when she came to me, it took years for her to regress, but then when she was a teenager she went through several periods of wanting baby/toddler activites and experiences, mostly rocking and cradling and singing lullabies, but also sometimes bottle feeding.

I think it's important to let our children regress when they want to, experience loving baby activities. I have found them very calming for the kids, which makes complete sense because in actual babyhood, it's rhythmic rocking, physical and sensory activities which are used to calm baby, until they get older and can start using other cognitive skills for regulation. But if our kids don't have good regulation, we can really benefit from going right back to the basics of regulation, the fundamental physical input from someone else which is used for little ones. It's helpful in my experience. Expecting my very traumatised DD2 to self regulate before she's experienced an adult helping her to regulate by giving her some physical or sensory input, would be like asking my grandaughter to run before she's learned to walk

That said, there might be some times where a child chooses to act younger in order to get something/control/manipulate, in which case it might be counterproductive to baby. My DD1's younger sister (we had direct contact several times a year when they were growing up) has attachment disorder, and she would very much act more babyish around me (and strangers/teachers) but when around me she would also act in such a nice kind way to her parents, and want cuddles and rocking...except to me her behaviour seemed fake, and her parents told me she would never do that if other adults weren't around to witness it I'm sure I only recognised her behaviour as 'off' because DD1 had attachment issues (though not RAD/attachment disorder) and I know her parents were frustrated by how other people would totally fall for it, as it were, and belive this was a child who could do no wrong and was the most friendly loving child who ever lived.

So as with all things, it's child dependent, but I'm very pro allowing a child to regress if they are showing a genuine desire to

Thank you all for your lovely responses. I feel very much reassured that these regressive behaviours are quite 'normal' for our children and can carry on into the teenage years and even beyond. Oh, Lilka I wish I had room for a rocking chair - if I come round your house would you rock me please? - I think I could do with some of that!!