Reply to Please help, what is this condition or disorder?

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Reply to "Please help, what is this condition or disorder?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, your son sounds a lot like mine.  He definitely was rude and self centered but that part is getting better.  He is very intense, and interactions with him can leave one drained, and yes, even hostile towards him.  He does not draw out warm cuddly feelings from a parent.

He also has Executive Function disorder.  One Executive Function is the ability to switch gears, or "cognitive set".  He has a terrible time doing that.  It was horrible when he was a toddler, and when he was in early elementary school he was at about the level of a toddler in his ability to switch gears.  What I mean by that is, you know all the tricks you are supposed to use with a toddler to warn them that one activity is about to end and you will be leaving and moving on to do something else?   Those FINALLY started working by the time he was in Kindergarten.

Things had to be exactly the way he was expecting them, or he was unable to move on.  And it was't the case that if you just held firm and refused to cater, he'd eventually get over it.   He just never got over to, and would explode in frustration and the worst thing was, if you really stuck to it and weathered a three hour storm (over the size or shape of pancakes, say) the NEXT time it happened, you'd have to do the same thing all over again -- he wouldn't learn from these events!  And disciplining him didn't help eaither.

What did help was reading "The Explosive CHild" and learning to treat this difficulty switching gears as a developmental delay, recognizing what his present level of functioning was, and trying to deal with him as if he were a much younger child but teach him how to handle changes at that younger level and move him up the ladder of skills.   This part was really hard because I got a lot of accusations from family that I was coddling and enabling his behavior, but I just ignored them because I could tell I was on the right track because I was seeing improvement.  THings are so much better now -- he is 10, and also I think his brain has just matured.  I'd say he was working more on the level of an 8 year old now in terms of his ability to be adaptable and switch gears, but that is so much easier to live with![/quote]

Not OP, but thanks for this very helpful post.[/quote]

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