4.5 year old behavior help/vent

[Trillian]

Arte, these days giftedness is Aspergers Asperger's Syndrome. Ask any teacher and they will tell you the same. Maybe in NZ they still percieve giftedness to be something in it's own right, but if you were still in Aus, it would be called aspergers. I am not going to say anything more about this to you because I honestly think you have blinkers on to the situation and aren't ready to hear it because 'giftedness' sounds so much better than 'aspergers'. Either way, he needs help which he is not currently getting that will help him deal with his emotional outbursts and behaviour issues. Just because he *might* be gifted, does not mean that is the end of it. You owe it to him to seek out whatever help you can to help him build the tools and strategies he needs to cope. What are you going to do with him when he's 15 and still doing this? Are you just going to walk away from him then because he's not listening to you or doing things your way? I've listened and supported you for years over this and TBH it's getting tiring, especially when I can see that you're not really doing anything to help him. It's hard to keep putting on the brave face and tell you platitudes like 'it will pass soon' or 'its just a stage' because it is well beyond that. You know us all Arte, our group have been belly and baby buddies for nearly 5 years now and we love you to death and we hate seeing how hard all of this is for you because we all feel so helpless that we can't offer more practical help or advice, but it's frustrating to keep trying to support you when you don't really do anythying to help the situation. Going to the nurse was a positive move and I hope talking to her really makes a difference and you get that referral so you can move forward to this, but once you get it you have to make sure you follow it through and not think that because things have settled down that everything is OK and it must have just been a stage. Because you know it will happen again

ETA - I thought I would add that we went through this with our best friends and their eldest son. We *knew* that something wasn't right with him, but no one could quite put their finger on it. Our friends thought that he was incredibily 'busy' and full on, because in among all the stuff that he was doing, he would have moments of brilliance that would make you think that he was just a normal toddler. When he started preschool it didn't take long before he got a dx of autism and when we heard, I told my friend that I had a feeling all along that this is what was going on for him and she said 'why didn't you say anything' and I told her - would you have listened to me if I did? and she admitted that she probably wouldn't have. Her DH found it really hard to deal with 'his son' not being perfect or normal like other kids, but you know what? Once they got that dx they found it so much easier to relate to him and have patience for the things he would do. They were able to put in place strategies to help him and themselves deal with him when he had outbursts, but now he's getting older (he is nearly 11) it is getting worse again as he is now getting physically violent with them on occasion. I know he is at the lower end of the scale to W, but the point is that until they knew what made him tick, they couldn't help him and once they knew it made things easier.