Frustrated...

[babsintx3 0]

Hi Estela,

This topic hits home for me as well. I have a 10 year old and 3 1/2 year old. My ten year old exhibited aggressive behavior starting at age 3. Lots of hitting and slapping and temper tantrums.By age 6, he was expelled from school and put in alternative school in his school district for 5 days with teenagers and metal detectors. He actually liked alternative school cause he got lots of attention and the principal loved him. During the five days he was there, it was apparent that much of his behavior was due to boredom and immaturity. The kept bringing him work at first grade level. He finished this in half a day. They brought him 2nd grade work. He finished this day 2. The 3 and 4th grade work. He completed all of it. Clearly he was not being challenged in school and that was a huge problem. We brought him to a shrink and started with medication for ADHD and depression by the time he was 7 to try to keep him in public school. He was diagnosed with ADD and impulsivity, ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and depression. THe drugs made him worse and in the end we pulled him out of public school since they were not able to meet his emotiional or scholastic needs. We took him off all medication and changed his environment by sending him to a school for high IQ kids with behavior issues.

Now the good news. My son is doing great. He outgrew most of the behaviors. He is now back in public school and doing very well. He has not been on medication in 2 and a half years. He is no longer aggressive and understand the consequences of his actions.

I personally dont believe in ADHD and ODD. ODD is just bad parenting and I do believe that some children are aggressive by nature because they had some trauma in their baby years. My son had terrible ear infections, problems with his throat, eyes and ears and had a horrible time his first two years of life. I do believe that sometimes ADHD meds help some folks, but most of the time they dont. I refuse to medicate my kid to mainstream him.

High IQ kids are wired differently and have a different perception of events. They are ornery, whiney, dont like tags on their clothes, dont like the way their shoes feel, take a long time in the morning to get ready, are forgetful, careless with their belongings and sometimes even appear lazy. They are ultra sensitive, cry a lot, get angry a lot faster and are usually very immature, thus lashing out at folks due to immaturity. The problem is that really smart kids have a chronological age which has not caught up with their scholastic age. Clearly your son is bored and admittedly some of your parenting skills are less than perfect, but whose is? I learned the hard way and I am still learning everyday.

My belief is if you change the environment, you change the kid. Slapping, hitting and kicking are not acceptable behaviors and require consequences. As Michelle said, its about a system of rewards and consequences. I dont call them punishments. Its about dealing with behaviors in a different way. Timeouts dont necesarily work for extremely aggressive kids. If they are oppositional, they wont listen and will not stay in a corner for long. And the really oppositional ones dont see this as a punishment anyway. Rewards and accepting consequences for less than ideal behavior seems to work very well for kids with this kind of wiring. Yeah, they cry and scream, make you feel guilty when you take away something they really like but in the end you will have a much happier child and certainly one that is easier to deal with. I wish you luck. You have a challenge ahead of you.

Babs in TX

334/180

[Mariposa Bella 3]

High IQ kids are wired differently and have a different perception of events. They are ornery, whiney, dont like tags on their clothes, dont like the way their shoes feel, take a long time in the morning to get ready, are forgetful, careless with their belongings and sometimes even appear lazy. They are ultra sensitive, cry a lot, get angry a lot faster and are usually very immature, thus lashing out at folks due to immaturity. The problem is that really smart kids have a chronological age which has not caught up with their scholastic age. Clearly your son is bored and admittedly some of your parenting skills are less than perfect, but whose is? I learned the hard way and I am still learning everyday.

Babs in TX

334/180

This hit the spot, what you are describing is my kid. He hates tags in his clothes, he won't wear but a certain pair of sandals he says that he doesn't like the other shoes, I've tried different types of sandals and other types of tennis shoes and he doesn't feel comfortable in any of them. He is very sensitive and cries a lot, actually the paragraph above describes him perfectly. Okay now that I can identify him w/ this type of behavior what would you recommend I do, do you think putting him in the k3 program will give hime more to do therefore less time to act out and become bored? What also baffles me about him is his ear for music, this kid can hear the tune to a song and he will be bee bopping singing to this music until he has it down pat. One time a person commented to me that she believes he is musically gifted because of the way he hears it and interprets it? Could this be? and if so? where do you turn to for help?? We live in a small town who should I approach w/ these concerns, any ideas??

[babsintx3 0]

Hi Estela,

I would certainly give him more advanced stimulation. If you can get him in K-3 and maybe a music program of some kind, I would definitely do this.

But you still need to focus on the aggressive behavior. I found that the biggest problem I faced with my son is that people did not see the brilliance because the behaviors overshadowed everything else. Public school is the worst environment for an emotionally immature, aggressive yet gifted kid. Public school wants compliant, average or slightly above average kids and thats what they cater to. You may want to do some research on what they call "dual exceptionality". This is a gifted child who has a learning disability like attention problems, hyperactivity, aggressive behavior etc.. There are lots of articles on the internet about this. You should also have your child tested. A standard IQ test like the Weschler or Stanford Binet administered by a Phd psychologist along with a psych evaluation will help you to determine whether he is truly gifted or not and if he has any other issues you need to address regarding emotional and psychological growth. Many parents think their children are gifted, but there is a big difference between what they call globally gifted which is a high IQ in the 98th percentile or better and being gifted in just one are like music or art for example. My insurance company paid for this as well as a trip to a child psychiatrist to evaluate him. Actually, the several visits we had with the psychiatrist really made me feel better because he assured me that my son would grow out of most of the behaviors and it helped us to tailor an autonomous learning model in a private school which really worked for him.

The most important thing you can do for your son is to help him understand that there are better ways to channel anger. Some of the techniques we used was letting my son wear a rubber band around his wrist. If he got angry, he would tug on the rubberband and snap it on his own skin. We wouild also acknowledge his anger and ask him lots of question and his feelings. Your son has to realize that there are consequences for his actions. He will have to understand that private school and music lesson are rewards for good behavior. There have to be consequences and you need to start now. Most really smart kids are oppositional. They are very inquisitive and sometimes annoy others with their confrontational approach to things. That may never go away. My son is still very confrontational and still emotional and still a difficult child at times, but the anger is under control and that was more than half the battle. Feel free to email me privately if you have questions.

Babs in TX