Some of this sounds familiar. My son didn't throw tantrums, it was me having mommy meltdowns from lack of sleep and no time alone. The talking and questioning and occasional bossiness definitely sounds familiar, but he is not as bossy as my daughter was because he has more empathy.
He always needed less sleep than I did, just like his Dad, and if he was awake, I was supposed to be awake.
At five or six he stopped asking quite as many questions, because he learned to look up answers online, but the questions were replaced with "Mom, did you know ..." or "Mom, you've gotta see this really cool Youtube video" or "Mom, this new video game is coming out next month, do you want to know what it is?" to which I reply not really, but he laughs and tells me anyway and tries to convince me that it is "educational" in some way hoping that I will buy it for him.
Like your son, he can tell when people are in pain and hiding it. At 4 1/2 when his grandmother suddenly lost many years worth of memories (including the fact that he was her grandson who lived next door to her and saw her every day) and she couldn't communicate very well, he understood her pain and somehow knew what she was trying to say. It was almost like a psychic connection of some kind. I remember one time when my Dad, who takes care of my mother at home, went outside because we heard sirens. It turned out there was a grass fire in our neighborhood. My son told me that he thought we should stay inside with my mother because she might be frightened. We stay with my mother any time my Dad has to leave the house. My son is so patient with her when she asks the same questions over and over again because her short term memory is limited to about 30 seconds.
My son always seemed to have a lot more empathy than my former cheerleader daughter and I know that he doesn't intend to annoy me. Most of the time he just wants to share something he finds interesting and I feel really bad about snapping at him. For example, he just shared this quote that he heard on Youtube from a guy who played Guitar Hero: "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you are all the same." He liked the quote and thought it was worth sharing.
He can tell when there is something bothering me and if I don't tell him what it is or if I try to tell him that it is something else, he can tell that I am not being entirely truthful and it bothers him. He thinks I should be able to tell him anything. When he senses that I am upset or worried about something, he tells me that I am really a good mom and he tries to talk me through it or make me laugh.
