Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need help with defiant child

Hi,

I'm fairly new to these forums, and I was hoping that someone here has BTDT and can provide some advice.

Some background: My DS5 is in Pre-K. At the first parent-teacher conference in November, we were told of certain behavior problems. We suspected that many of the behaviors were because he was "gifted", and although we never had him tested, we thought he was probably bored. Fast forward to February, we had our son tested and confirmed our long-thought suspicions that our son is in fact gifted. The psychologist agreed with us that many of his behaviors were probably because he was bored. The psychologist came up with several ideas to try to challenge him, to get him to the end of the school year. We met with the teacher, principal, and school counselor last week to share the ideas, and they were receptive.

The problem is DS often refuses to follow directions. There are certain times where he really digs his heels in and is quite defiant. He will tell the teacher he doesn't want to do something, he doesn't find the topic interesting, doesn't like the rules. He tells me he can do what the teacher asks, but he just doesn't want to. And nothing seems to phase him.

DH and I know that this is not the optimal environment for him, but we're hoping that if the teacher follows through on some of the psychologist's ideas things will improve. However, the total lack of respect for authority is a problem. We will be advocating for a grade-skip at a new school next year (at the psychologist's recommendation), but his current behavior will certainly work against him if it continues in the new school. We know he's in a difficult situation, but still, at some point, he does need to learn to follow directions, even if he doesn't necessarily agree with them. No? I know he's only 5, but if he is being this defiant to authority figures now, I shudder to think of what lies ahead.

This is really killing me and DH. DS can be such a wonderful child, yet he is so strong-willed. Always has been. We have tried time-outs, behavior charts and earning rewards (which worked for a while), taking away privileges, and at this point nothing seems to be working.

I'm sorry that this post is so long. Since I've read that being strong-willed can be common in gifted children, I'm hoping that someone out there has BTDT and can provide any suggestions. My husband and I are at a loss at this point. And I'm just beating myself up and questioning my parenting skills too.

Thanks so much for listening.

Big hugs m2gts. Defiance is tough and we've had a fair dose of it in my household. We've tried lots of different things with varying results (magic 1-2-3, sticker charts, pocket money, homeopathy, etc.)

For me, fostering intrinsic motivation has been the answer. When Miss 7 is motivated to do something (at the moment it's spelling), then she just gets on a roll and her overall behaviour at school improves. Working out how to develop intrinsic motivation is, of course, pretty bloomin' tricky. But for me the key question is... where's the blockage coming from? What's the pay-off for your DS of being defiant? What's he getting out of it? And how do you foster good learning behaviours for use at school and home?

Few answers, but lots of empathy... jojo

BTDT way too much. We finally found a program called SMART Discipline. It's about setting up rules and taking away priveleges. We had done something of this before, as well as rewards, sticker charts, and everything else we could think of. This took a bit longer to work than recommended, but it does seem to be working. You can google it and find out all about it. You could set up a chart at school and one at home. The trick, I think, is to be brutally consistent with it and that is really hard. If you check it out and have questions, please let me know. There's not really anything to buy, although I think there might be book. Good luck. Defiance also might be a social/emotional thing, as we are beginning to piece together.

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Sounds tough! I'm with jojo, what works for us is avoiding going for extrinsic motivation (rewards, punishments, praise, criticism) and going for intrinsic motivation and cooperation (why do you want him to behave the way you do want? how will it make people feel? what difference will it make? how does this part of the world work? what's difficult for him about behaving the way you want, and how can you work together to overcome the difficulties?) For my DS5, once he's in non-cooperation mode, anything that smacks of manipulating him makes things worse. He's quite adept, though, at seeing other people's points of view. For example, I'd talk to him about what the teacher's job is like, how she doesn't always have time to think about exactly what would be best for him to do because there are other children who need attention, etc. I'd talk about how the teacher's job is to tell the children what to do and the children's job is to do it, even. If the work is too easy, would he be receptive to a suggestion that he try to do it as quickly as possible? Or that he suggest to the teacher some harder variant?

I could have written the same post about DD5. We are having the same exact situation. I wish I had some advice for you, but nothing we have tried seems to be working either. It seems like something that works one week, doesn't work the next.

We went through an extremely rough patch with DS (now almost 6). It led to our first testing of him, etc. and he's now a very happy kid again, homeschooled and a DYS. But the road has been LOOONG and we tried every parenting trick and education environment out there, it seems.

One book that was like the Holy Grail for us is called "Transforming the Difficult Child" by Glasser. Here it is on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Transforming-...mp;s=books&qid=1237908938&sr=8-1

It was like a "headsmack" moment reading the first chapters of the book and explained to a "t" what we were seeing from DS. And the solutions were extremely practical and easy to implement. I can't recommend it highly enough...it certainly helped bring peace and sanity back to our house!

Thank you so much for all your thoughts. And newtothis, got your message, thank you so much for the book recommendation. I'll definitely check this out. If I have any questions, I'll let you know.

I contacted the psychologist that did my son's testing, and she will be getting back to me with a few ideas on the behavior issue as well. Hopefully with your ideas and her suggestions, we can get a bit more cooperation from DS in school.

Thanks again!

Ds6 had/has this problem -- he was in public K last year, now in private gifted school and accelerated to third for math and language arts. In LA lately, he's been refusing to write when asked, and not doing classwork -- and then telling his teacher she doesn't need to check his work because he really did do it.

We have a Behavior Notebook that ds takes with him to school if he's having a rough patch in any particular class. The teacher writes a one-sentence summary of his class every day -- if he was on task, disruptive, etc. Once that notebook starts going to school, ds knows he's in for it and that we are monitoring his behavior, and he shapes up *very* quickly -- he's very conscious of his pride. It wouldn't work for all kids, but ds does much, much better if he knows Mom and Dad are expecting a daily report.

Older kids here, but had some of your problems.
Set very strict boundaries. Reward good behaviour. See problem in your kid, not the school /teacher.
To be succesful in life they will need to conform to a certain degree. Teach him not to burn the bridges behind him - he might need them for future references...