Hi, Carey.
I'm sorry you're having this sort of trouble. It may simply be that he is an exceptionally bright kid who is also very much aware of his 'status' as son of the Person In Charge, and could be using this as some sort of justification for his behaviour. "My mother's the boss of you, my mother loves me, therefore I am the boss of you also."
Add in the possibility that he resents the time this takes away from just him and you, and it could be explained that way.
If this is any part of resentment of your involvement in helping other kids, you could counter this by giving him some unconditional time, just the two of you, maybe playing a game or reading a book. A little each day that he can count on, which he still gets even if he's been horrible - I think it might help, if the problem is simply a need for time with mum. It needs to be fun time, pleasant time, time when he feels special. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes at least. And you need to do it with your other son, too. Again, one on one.
If you can get husband to do the same, take each boy for some special father-son time, it can only help. Maybe you could each take a child for a short time, then later on swap.
You've had "explosive Child" recommended. It's great, it really helps. You can use the techniques with a easy child too, so you can be consistent. But you would need husband on the same page, this will require you two to talk about things, to agree on things. Ignore the possibility of disorder/problem/whatever - you're dealing with some inappropriate behaviours which can turn up with PCs just as often. So, to deal with the behaviours, and to also deal with them in a way designed to really work WITH a very bright kid - the book is good there, too. I'm speaking from experience.
One thing you will find with "Explosive Child" - it sets standards for YOUR interactions, because often these kids learn best by example. So if you treat him with respect, he learns to follow this and treat you with respect. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it's a start. You can't teach a kid to not hit other kids, for example, by smacking them. And if there is ANY factor of him seeing himself in a position of authority over the other kids in your care, then bright or not, he is likely to be feeling some degree of confusion over exactly what his role is, what his responsibilities are and what his rights are. Where does he fit in?
An example here - I used to help out (ages ago) at a one-day-a-week Playgroup. This was a venue in a local hall where parents/caregivers would bring the pre-school children in their charge and let the kids mingle for a couple of hours. Some structured play was available as well as a wide range of unstructured play. We each had to watch our own kids but also work as a group to make sure everyone had a good time. There were chores - parents took turns at setting up, at running the activities, at organising the snacks etc. I remember not long after easy child started school, she came along with me during school holidays. She enjoyed going, but suddenly it became a problem for her. She was beginning to realise she had outgrown Playgroup, she didn't know where she fitted in. No longer did it feel 'right' to join in with the little kids, but she clearly was too young to be an authority figure. She was sad at the realisation that she was growing up, didn't want to let go, and didn't know what to move onto. It was her self-concept that was the problem. At about 5 years old she had the beginnings of the maturity to understand this, especially after we talked about it. But it made her sad and a bit scared as well, to know that growing up meant change and uncertainty.
easy child is VERY bright, which may be why we saw this problem as early as we did with her.
So your son may just be a very bright kid. As I said, this doesn't preclude him from still finding the social situation confusing, with your role as supervisor clashing in his mind with your role as HIS mother. He might benefit from a social story, to explain to him exactly what your role is, and what his role is.
Or your son may have something more going on. As someone with several high-functioning autistics, I can tell you that sometimes in the early stages this can seem indistinguishable from an extremely bright easy child.
easy child was an amazing kid. OK, she was my eldest and ALL eldest children are amazingly brilliant. But she was also in Long Day Care full-time from 10 weeks old (I needed to work, due to our expensive mortgage). I really would have liked her to start school a year before she did. I made enquiries and it just wasn't possible. As it was, she started school a year younger than many kids, turning 5 about a third of the way through her Kindergarten year. Kids in our area MUST start school by the age of 6. They must be at least 5 years old by 31 July in the year they begin. Most kids are older than that by a year at least.
So easy child started school and immediately was a handful for her teacher, because she was bright, and bored. Because a lot of the other kids had also come form Long Day Care, the teacher said, "I have a classroom full of leaders and no followers!"
No such problems with difficult child 1. He seemed bright, but passive and very clingy. He was very snuggly, wanted to be held a lot and would sit still on my lap for hours. He seemed slow to learn skills such as doing up his shoes but people said, "Boys are different; easy child is so bright almost ANY child would seem less bright by comparison."
And he was still bright - he was reading to a certain extent before school, he knew his shapes, colours etc. He had, in spades, a lot of the basics needed in plenty of time. But he turned 5 about the same time school began.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 - a bright kid, maybe even brighter than easy child. And that was a problem - August birthdate. Two weeks past the cut-off. So I jumped through hoops and pulled every political string I could, to get her into school when I felt she was ready - at age 4, like her sister. As it was, she was probably the brightest kid in the class as well as the youngest. The political struggle was amazing, but we did it. And we also did it without her knowing about it. I was very careful about that.
So with this experience, 7 years later I had difficult child 3. By this stage difficult child 1 had been diagnosed with ADHD, which seemed to explain a lot about his clinginess, his passivity and his difficulty staying on task.
difficult child 3 was a bright kid. He was also a very good baby, perhaps because I gave him what he wanted. Food, mostly. He worked out how to go to sleep, you could see him turn his head and tuck his nose in to sleep, when he was put to bed, at about 3 months old. He watched TV game shows at about 6 months, which we all thought was cute, funny, and utter coincidence. Turns out it wasn't. He was hyperlexic. The little blighter turned out to be obsessed with the numbers on the scoreboard, and the letters in the names.
By a year old difficult child 3 was clearly musical. He would sit on my lap when I played piano and he would reach for the keys. Not bashing at it like babies do, but instead he would carefully and deliberately play chords, choosing melodic intervals. He was also using a computer (an old one literally found in the street). He began to navigate his way around some simply software like mazes, or matching numbers and letters (screen to keyboard). We videotaped this - a couple of days after he turned 2, we've got him on video typing to match the upper case letters on the keyboard to the lower case on the screen. He had already learned to navigate around the menu bar on the computer to change games or quit the program. By this stage he was reading music and playing his own tunes on the piano.
Screamingly bright.
I began the same procedures I had set in place with easy child 2/difficult child 2 - this was a kid who looked like needing early school entry. But soon I pulled the plug - difficult child 3 wasn't talking. OK, Einstein didn't talk until he was 5, but no way could difficult child 3 start school with the problems that now began to be more noticeable.
We didn't have the hitting of other kids that you describe, but then we weren't in the social situation your kids are in, either. Maybe he would have.
All this time I had thought I had the easy child I desperately wanted. Turned out I had yet another difficult child. But his abilities were phenomenal. By this stage he could pick up a newspaper and read it aloud, but he had no comprehension of what he was reading and the only words he could speak were ones he could read.
Long story cut short - difficult child 3 was diagnosed as autistic (Asperger's considered) at about two and a half. At 3, he was confirmed as autistic and not Asperger's (because of the language delay) and stims were commenced because he also had ADHD. difficult child 1 was diagnosis'd Aspie + ADHD the same day while easy child 2/difficult child 2 was diagnosis'd borderline Aspie plus ADD (inattentive type).
The stims were almost magical. From the occasional single word (which I had been teaching him by writing them down in a book for him with a small drawing to show the meaning) difficult child 3 went to full sentences within a week. easy child was away at camp for a week and returned to a baby brother who could talk at last.
A year later we were told by a multi-disciplinary clinic that difficult child 3 was definitely autistic and he would never go to a normal school, would always be dependent, would have to get intensive care and therapy. He 'failed' his psychometric assessment (because it was all verbal! Idiots - if they'd given him a written test he probably would have done brilliantly). Very pessimistic.
They wouldn't know him now. He is amazing. People dispute the diagnosis, even his psychiatrist disputes it and labels him Aspie. It's very difficult to measure his IQ, but the best estimate we've had so far is an IQ in the mid-140s, which we were told was probably an underestimate. His siblings are between about 135 to 145, so this fits.
It's not always easy. We switched to using "Explosive Child" and finally began to make good progress with behaviour. Before that, we were using the strict authoritarian approach and it WAS NOT working. If anything, he was getting worse, more defiant, more aggressive. He was also bullied a lot at school and this also made him much more physically aggressive. A kid might jostle him, so he would hit the other kid, or shove him.
Now - he's doing well with schoolwork (except the more subtle areas in English and humanities subjects). He's blitzing maths & science, acing technology and electronics. He's already earned money fixing other people's computer problems.
There is a lot more to the story, but I won't go into it now.
Suffice to say - there are downsides to having a kid on the spectrum, but there are also benefits. There are also the "interesting" aspects (in total - PMI = Plus, Minus, Interesting). If you watch your son you may see some of these.
Some of these characteristics are what we strive for in our teaching. Some of them are standard fare, found in all kids in their development. And some are distinctive.
For example - Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids tend to be obsessive, meticulous, can get either distracted by or caught up in apparently irrelevant activities (such as watching water fall, or sand, or dirt, or as in difficult child 3's case the flicker of light through the trees); they are extremely egocentric (the world revolves around them) which can also seem very selfish; they are consistent and follow rules but it is THEIR rules which they have defined scientifically based on their observations of how the world connects and interacts; they treat others as they are treated by those others. So if you scold them, you will hear the same tones come back at you and scolding you. This is often misinterpreted as disrespect, insolence and rudeness. it is not. But look for this - it could be a pointer.
Good points - for more information, look for articles by Tony Attwood. He's very encouraging to read on this topic, very informative. Aspie/high functioning autistic kids are very loyal; loving, especially to those who show them love; law-abiding (with above proviso, that it is the laws that they recognise as being of value); truthful (they are really bad at telling complex lies so over time they learn to not try, as a rule); are truly egalitarian.
This egalitarianism can actually be a problem - as a teacher of mine once said, "God didn't really make all of us equal. It was really very naughty of him."
We really do not want equality, not really. Not once we meet true equality as presented by these kids. difficult child 3 would always judge other people's behaviour, efforts and interests by his own standards. Asked to read a book to a six month old baby, difficult child 3 held up two books to the baby and asked him to choose one. He then read the book exactly as books were read to him, including trying to encourage some thought processes on the book content. "Now, baby, can you see where Spot is hiding? Do you think he is under the chair? Why do you think Spot is hiding? Is he being naughty?" and so on. The baby, of course, was loving being talked to but I had to watch to make sure difficult child 3 didn't interpret lack of a meaningful verbal response as rudeness.
Does your son do this?
Over time difficult child 3 has been learning "relativity". He understands intellectually that there are different viewpoints. He also has been mingling with other Special Needs kids, including others with autism. One friend of his is also very bright, high-functioning autistic. This other lad can be VERY scathing, very condescending to the point of seeming rude. It's a matter of understanding, and guiding him to a more appropriate response.
Others in the group are clearly "developmentally delayed" including a Prader-Willi kid, a couple of Downs teens and some others with global intellectual handicaps. The Aspies in the group have had to learn tolerance - it's been good for them. They also are all VERY fond of one another and very supportive of one another. It's lovely to see.
difficult child 3 learns at home by correspondence. The other really bright boy I mentioned used to, but now goes to a mainstream school with a Special Education class for high-functioning autistic kids. Both do a mainstream curriculum.
difficult child 3 learns better this way. He is pro-active about his learning and really enjoys a challenge. He's even begun to do well in English!
I hope this has helped.
Basically, I've had experience with very bright PCs, and with very bright difficult children. Whichever your son belongs to, you need similar techniques at this stage. Keep him intellectually stimulated, use praise rather than punishment, give him one-on-one time with you. And show him respect, follow "Explosive Child" and find ways to help him have control over areas in his life that are no big deal for you. Let him learn at his own pace (likely to be really fast at times) and just love him. Lots.
One last thought - there is an interesting Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) questionnaire on
www.childbrain.com. it's not officially diagnostic but you might find it useful to either put your mind at rest, or give you something to print out and take to a doctor to ask a few pertinent questions.
Marg
