6yr old son behavior problems

[glenchuti]

*Hi all,
firstly will explain our problem.

Our 6yr old son is a normal boy who is very friendly and loving and caring(loves to hug and kiss us)with everyone especially family members.He is not shy and he makes friends easily.
Since he started nursery we noticed a speech delay,and he started talking very late compared to other children.He has been going to speech therapy for a year.Apart from the speech our son is very clever and understands everything and he does quite well at school maintaining an average group level during these years.
School recommended a change for him during his nursery year (age 4)to a special needs school due to his speech which was delaying his progress...we refused after consulting with some teacher friends who just thought this change to another school was because the school did not want to have to be all the time giving our son the special attention he needed one to one.The special needs school here in Gibraltar mostly have children with mental problems,physical delays and we just thought this could be worse for him as the only delay he has is his speech.Our son did not change school and has been going to the same school since he was 3.Teachers are great and have been helping him a lot.
My wife decided to help our son as much as possible and decided to leave her full time job to help him all that she could.My wife has no qualifications and just basic school learning,but she has done incredible things with him.She reads to him,teaches him maths and has brought the best out of our son,to the point that he is doing great at school.He still has his speech delay but now he communicates easily and most of his words are understandable.I really can not thank my wife enough because she has had a lot of patience and ability to make our son into a normal boy like any other in his class,without the need of any special needs classes.
Now there is a problem that has recently escalated and it is way our son behaves and acts at home and in public.Lately,although he has been doing it for some time,he has started to answer back,hit and spit when he is angry.He also hits his sister without any reason and does not accept a "no" for an answer.
Some examples are the following:
The other day he got upset at the beach because he saw his granny had started playing cards with his sister without him so he run up and from the table tossed all the cards into the air,calling his granny "you are naughty"and spitting at her.

Another day he was told of for throwing sand to his sister (she is 10)by my wife and he would not accept being told off and threw sand to my wife and started shouting and threw himself onto the sand .My wife told him that when he got home he would be punished without pS3 and he relied by shouting and throwing sand all over my wife and everyone that was sitting at the beach table to have tea,sand going in the tea cups biscuits etc.

My wife is getting upset and does not know what we can do as the incidents that happen in public like the beach ones are very embarrassing as everyone knows each other as Gibraltar is a very small community.I have told her that he will get better as he gets older but i myself star to doubt my words.Our son is a great boy,very loving and really normal but these outbursts when he is told off are getting to be very difficult to accept at his age.

I hope some parents can give us some advise and maybe some solutions.Will this go away with time?


thank you all for reading

 

[BusynMember]

Why is the school making such a big deal out of the speech? How severe is it? How does it affect him that they wanted to switch him to a special school? Is he getting speech? How does he transition from one activity to another? You noticed NOTHING other than a speech delay and some intermittent anger? I do think the anger is over the edge, however you didn't give us enough to advise you. Something made you come here. What was it?

Can you tell us about his infancy and toddlerhood? Is her both of your biological child? Any other delays? Pottying? Is he sensitive to loud noise or certain fabrics or textures of food? Does he have nightmares? Is he overly active? Does he make good eye contact with strangers? Does he play well with his toys or does he dismantle them or seem disinterested in them? How is his sleep? Will he listen to you when you tell him to, say, put away his toys? Any psyschiatric or neurological problems on either side of the genetic family tree, even if he never saw them (DNA is huge).

Obviously you both saw something differently wired about your child or your wife would not have taken off work to work with him. Can you please share what she did with him?

To me, he sounds a bit spectrumish to me in her behavior, but you should really have him evaluated by a neuropsysch or a team of child professionals from a university hosptial...sort of a team approach. Don't try to do it yourself. It's too hard to stay deteached emotionally from your own child. It's the reason why doctor's don't operate on their own kids.

Teachers are not diagnosticians and know very little about childhood disorders. Don't use a teacher as your frame of reference about what to do for your child.

Welcome to the board, but sorry you felt the need to post here with us

 

[InsaneCdn]

He's from GIBRALTAR
I doubt they have access to the kinds of resources we have in North America, for example.

 

[BusynMember]

Oh....ok. Um, I may sound dumb here, but I never heard of Gilbrator. I thought it was a small city in the US..lol. Sorry, OP.

 

[InsaneCdn]

You know where Spain is? GIBRALTAR is the southern-most tip of that chunk of land, at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks, IC. I guess I'm a good example of the failures of teaching American geography

 

[glenchuti]

Gibraltar is part of Britain territory and by geography next to spain,although we consider ourselves an own country independent from Britain.
We like britain have a free health service second to none in the world,and we do get sent to UK or Spain for referrals to all types of specialists that might be unavailable here although we have our own specialists and consultants.
Now that that is out of the way,i will answer that our son is perfectly normal,does what you tell him.puts toys away.Potty trained since he was 2.Dresses himself since he was 4.Not sensitive to noises etc,no nightmares ,basicly none of the symptoms asked by Midwest mom.The only thing is that he has very flexible joints, he has flat feet and the stated before speech delay.
My wife decided to stay off work because she saw that our sons speech was interfering with his school development like reading and writing and she has been helping him with reading and writing at home so that he would not be behind the other children,not because he has serious problems like autism(none of the symptoms to any disorder).
The school being a public school would rather have 20 normal pupils to deal with than having to spend extra time helping a speech delayed child,that is why they proposed the change of school,were they said classes were smaller and there was more time for the teacher to have a one on one with the children.We declined because he already had made friends at the school and our daughter had also been to that school years earlier.We also did not think sending him to a school with some autistic children and mentally delayed children would be beneficial for his development.
That was 2 years ago and now he reads and writes to a very high standard and his speech has improved a lot(now one can understand him)mostly because my wife has been spending hours with him on a daily basis.We have noticed he does speak better in English than in Spanish(in gib we are all bilingual spanish being the most spoken language at home,English for education as it is our official language.as
The reason to post here this topic was to get some ideas from other parents who have kids at this age that act like our son when he is told off.Its not that he does it all the time just sometimes but i personally think its a growing up phase which he will grow out off,but my wife gets very upset and worries a lot.
I can say that he is a great boy loads of friends and i just think when he wants he is a naughty boy like most other kids of that age,my wife just needs reassuring coming from an all girl family i think she does not know how naughty boys can be compared to girls,i have a brother and we were always fighting,and i can not say i was a good boy at the age of 6 as i remember i did not like to listen to my parents or do what i was told.
Anyway thanks for reading

 

[InsaneCdn]

Thanks for the health-care background... most of us here are from North America, so it helps knowing what you have access to...

I'm just another parent of course. But I'm going to guess that this is a kid who sort of fits into the mainstream, but not quite. Maybe not enough "off" to even trigger an evaluation, but not quite "like everybody else". If so, it will show up more as he gets older.

Given his flexibility and flat feet etc. - I'd be at least looking at an Occupational Therapist (OT) evaluation for motor skills, because the impact of subtle differences sometimes doesn't show impact until later, but early help is beneficial. If nothing else, to "rule out" any issues on that front.

And then... I'd try reading a book like The Explosive Child by Ross Greene. It provides a different perspective on kids with challenges. For some of us, the actual approach in the book works, for some we use bits and pieces, and it doesn't always work. But in particular, I found the shift in mindset to be very valuable.

 

[SuZir]

Aggression can be related to speech delay if he feels he is not understood correctly or can't express his frustrations verbally. However his aggressiveness seems to have started quite late. One of the common reasons for aggressiveness in kids (especially boys) is depression, but what you tell us about him doesn't really sound like that too much either. He is also 6 and at least here (when you are in southernmost tip of Europe, I'm in the opposite) is considered a second big developmental 'difficult time' after terrible twos and before puberty. The point being, that kids learn to express their frustrations verbally instead of physically like they did during terrible twos. Having language delay could of course make that very challenging for him.

Does he behave aggressively also at school or just home and with you? What kind of behaviour modification tactics you have tried? How does he explain these aggressive outbursts?

Speech delay, like any challenge that effects every day life can easily have psychological and social effects. Have you talked about this behaviour with his speech pathologist? They likely do have experience of the speech delay effects to other development and behaviour. Maybe they could refer him to the psychologist experienced with these issues with kids with speech delay?

 

[glenchuti]

Thanks for the comments ,these have really helped.I might have not explained the problem properly the first time.He is just a normal kid but does not like to listen when he is been told off.We have opted these days to punish him without playstaion and moshi Monsters and today he did apply himself and was good during the day.thanks both of you for your comments