Hey guys,
these are all great suggestions... we are actually members of the South Street Seaport museum and the Intrepid (actually, if you join the NY Hall of Science you get in the Intrepid plus a LOT of other museums for free, so we do that) and have been to these museums an insane number of times. I'll have to check out that other link, questions-- and the links from eastnwest look great too-- looks like there are lots of local museums I've never even heard of that we can explore on the days when we can use the car.

And yeah, the passion for ships is an avenue for studying lots of other things-- the problem remains that he is only interested in exploring the aspects he is interested in exploring, but this is a much more cooperative approach.

Though I can't help but feeling, that, well...that it's a lot of work.

I do think he will respond well to feeling respected, and much of his defiance is just frustration at not feeling listened to.

Yet another problem is that he is addicted to video games of all kinds. I could always see he was the video game type, but we did not have a computer or TV until he was 5 (we did watch movies sometimes)...now he has two teenage stepsiblings with iphones and computers everywhere and all he wants to do is go on the computer and play games and he gets extra defiant and whiny when thwarted. I just want to take him to the woods and cleanse him!