Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do you have a kid who is NEVER EASY about ANYTHING

Hi all! Not really looking for help or solutions, but more into a bit of commiseration perhaps... Does anyone else have a kid who has a strong opinion about every last little thing? It's not that DS6 has meltdowns about these things or gets mad or anything, but often, he just won't let it go! I'll give you some examples from this evening:

- I suggested that we should do an online photo album of a recent trip to family and send a copy to his cousins. His reaction? No. We MUST wait until we go visit them next so that we can give it to them in person. Couldn't convince him otherwise.

- DS4 (the easygoing one!) wanted to play his own imaginary game with his own rules by himself. DS6 vehemently insisted that DS4 was doing it wrong.

- DS6 got upset when he thought that DS4 got a bigger portion of food than he did. Then he realized that DS4 also got more milk than he did. Oh boy.

And that was all in the span of about 30 minutes. And he's like that most of the day, most days. He is just completely exhausting. Friends will sometimes see this and say "Oh, it's kind of cute." Maybe it would be, if it weren't ALL THE TIME.

Anyone else?

Is this not the norm?

DD12 lost her mind last night when she unloaded the dishwasher that DS8 had filled and washed. He put the plates in backward! Can you imagine?!?

Kind cute, maybe. It may also be kinda ODD, as in oppositional defiance disorder.

Hoagies Gifted Education Page has a page dedicated to ODD resources, which mentions ODD.

SENG has a webpage on Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of gifted kids.

Thanks Indigo, I appreciate that you might have thought that I meant that he is defiant. But actually, it really has nothing to do with that. He is not an angry or defiant or oppositional child. In fact, he is a very loving and eager to please child. It's just that he is very intense. Put another way, it's like he's 1000% involved in every conversation.

Ross Greene's Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (aka, collaborative problem solving, prior to copyright dispute with MGH), which takes a strength-based and win-win approach:

"The Explosive Child"
www.livesinthebalance.org

Don't let the name of the book discourage you - it is fantastic and helped enormously with our DS who is a little ball of intensity himself. Our library has a copy.

Hmm. Don't think I'm expressing myself very well. It's more that everything matters to him. He puts his heart and soul into every subject that is discussed. Everything matters, and he is perfectly happy to discuss every subject fully. Does that make sense? And I'm not really looking for solutions, cause I think it's just part of his (mostly wonderful) personality. It's just tiring that no subject of conversation is ever mundane and unimportant to him.

Oh, and he probably comes by it honestly.

Though don't get me wrong, there are also issues with his inability to control his emotions. It just wasn't my "topic of the day".

I totally know what you mean. My two year old is like this. We joke that shes is aggressively constructive.

She took out a pack of paper plates that we had from moving and arranged them on the floor in the shape of a triangle or pyramid... I asked her if it was a tree "no mommy, tri-ngle" it was obvious that she wanted them spaced a certain way, so i went to help with one that was askew "no mommy, no touch, I doing it right"

sigh.

I have one like yours. Once, I was doing a decorating project in my own bedroom and he was seriously annoyed with me because he 1- didn't like it and 2- didn't think I needed to redecorate. ??!!! Last summer we had the house painted and he argued that we shouldn't change the color. Just last week I needed a new phone and he told me I didn't need the iPhone 6 and that the iPhone 5s would be what I wanted.

Like yours, he has an opinion about everything. Over the years, we've tried to teach him that not everything needs his input, and that not everyone wants to hear it. He mostly curbs it with others, now. But he still feels like I need to know his opinions. He's not bossy anymore about it and can accept when other disagree. It's cute, endearing, but admittedly sometimes annoying. I mean, I love the new color of our house! But I did agree with him on the iPhone 6!