Negative, non-compliant, miserable almost 4-yo

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Back here again with pleas for any help or insight. *Sigh* I feel like we've hit a brick wall. My almost 4-yo boy is just a miserable creature. He is argumentative and negative, non-compliant and so poorly behaved. I just don't know what to do anymore. I have THAT kid- the one you saw somewhere once and thanked heavens he wasn't yours. I'm not sure how it got to this point but nothing we have tried to encourage good behaviour has worked- up until this point he mostly just decided himself to be good I guess. Slowly, over the past year or so, he has been deciding less and less to "be good" and has turned into the kid we have today. I love him, but I am really starting not to like him. And that's not helping the situation either.

I have no idea if this is a developmental stage of testing boundaries and limits or whatever or if that kind of thing even applies to our kids. His language and expression has gotten drastically better in the last couple of months- we are surprised every day with something new he has said. He's also learned a few new physical skills (riding a scooter, swimming underwater) recently too. He has made strides in a few areas all while his behaviour was going down the tubes. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
Usually any question you ask him, he will reply with a whiny NOOOO even if it's a simple choice between two neutral things (which shoes to wear to go outside which is something he WANTS to do!). Anything you say to him is rapidly met with a negative answer or argument. Anywhere we go after 5 minutes he is whining or screaming constantly about wanting to go home or go somewhere else. Getting him to do anything you ask, even things he likes, is a chore or worse. Literally, anything- EVERYTHING. Our home is a miserable place these days. My one year old is picking up bad habits from him as well as what seems like anxiety from his constant state of upset and sudden screaming etc. My husband and I argue about how to deal with him- neither of us knows, really. We've taken a quick turn into a place I don't know how to get out of.
We live overseas and in a week we are travelling home to visit family and friends and although I'm not one to be ashamed of his quirks or differences at all (I share many of them with him) and they are mostly aware and accepting of ASDs, I will be ashamed that my kid is, well, a miserable brat that is torture to have around. Mostly because that means I've failed him. Oh yeah, and the 15 hour plane journey is sure to be a living hell.

Rewards and positive reinforcement don't register or make any difference. Even when the immediate reward is placed right in front him and clearly presented as something he'll receive after he's done whatever it is we need him to do, it doesn't work. He'll say he wants the reward but still will not do what we've asked. He's happy when we point out how he's done something well or acted appropriately in a situation, but that doesn't carry over in his brain to the next time.
Same with punishments. Time-outs just cause major destructive tantrums. Withholding something just makes him angrier and the behaviour worse. His default mode is just negative all the time. I'm really baffled at what's going on. I've been feeling like we were headed down this path... and all of a sudden we are HERE.

IS this an age thing? Where did we go wrong? Could my son be depressed? (We have depression and anxiety running strong through our families) If so, what do you with a depressed 4 yo??? How do I fix this? Because we just can't go on like this.

edited to add detail

I'm curious about the rewards/reinforcement issue. If you promise a reward, he seems interested but then refuses to do the task...what are his other options? Does he have the freedom to just walk away and watch TV or play with other toys? In other words, are you offering him a choice between non-compliance + complete boredom vs compliance + fun? Or is it more a choice between non-compliance + some fun vs compliance + more fun? Also consider what else he gets out of the inappropriate behaviors - does he get a lot of attention? Does he seem to want attention? Are you giving him more / less attention in general this year vs last year, when he was better behaved? You also seem to be getting worn down by your situation, and I can tell by the ways you describe your kid, that you're more than a bit discouraged by his behavior...is this hopelessness and negativity being somehow conveyed to him when you're with him (either directly through critical words or indirectly through tone of voice)?

I just gave you a few possible avenues to explore, but understand that you're in a difficult spot. I get the sense that you've tried and seem to understand some recommended techniques and are having trouble, so either you've made some small mistakes along the way that need some troubleshooting (it happens to the best parents), or you've got a really complex situation on your hands (and so the regular solutions may have to be specifically tailored to your kid). Either way, it may be helpful for you to speak to a behavioral consultant who can really examine what is happening in your home in detail. Good luck!

Is it that he hates wearing any kind of shoes?

I know I go barefoot whenever I can. I've learnt to tolerate shoes, but I've never really liked the feeling of shoes on my feet. Some shoes are worse than others, but even my favourite shoes are less comfortable than going barefoot.

Read The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene.

Rewards and positive reinforcement are all about motivation. When they don't work, you have to consider that perhaps a lack of motivation to behave isn't the problem.

Your kid is likely stressed out, and what you need to do is figure out what is causing him to be stressed and work on ways to lower his stress level as much as possible. Could be there are a lot of sensory issues that aren't obvious (For example, the shoes bug him). Could be you're asking him to do things most 4 year olds could reasonably be expected to do, but he is lacking some skills necessary to do them. (For example, when my son was 5, you could not say "go get your pajamas on" and have it happen. He could physically put each piece of clothing on if you handed it to him, but he was lacking the sequencing skills and attention span to do it on his own.) Could be he has a lot of difficult transitioning to a new location even when it's something fun (like from home to the park), and he needs a lot more time and preparation. Could be he has very rigid thinking about how things should happen and his expectations are frequently violated (ie today isn't the day we usually go to the park).

When you identify the problems very specifically and concretely, you can start finding solutions one by one until you get to a place where life is much calmer. Once you've reached a place where life is much calmer with him, then you can start systematically teaching the lagging skills and developing emotional resilience.

Regarding the book, your son may not have the communication skills to participate in "Plan B" discussions yet (mine certainly wouldn't have been able to before a leap in conversational skills around age 6). You can still use the A/B/C categories, and put on your detective hat to figure out the root of a particular problem and experiment with different solutions and observe whether they work.

This is going somewhere, I'm sorry if it seems OT at the beginning:

A Wrinkle In Time was my favorite book as a child. I was framed in much the same way that the heroine in the book is: stubborn, defiant, not pretty, etc. It was a huge relief for me to see Meg finally make use of her stubbornness and turn it into an asset.

I thought this book might help my Aspie son - but he got to the part where all the kids in the street are bouncing the ball in the same way, and the one little boy's ball gets away from him, and the parents act fearful when the ball is given to them...and then the little boy is punished horribly by bouncing a ball in a way that makes him scream in pain. He wouldn't read any further.

I suddenly realized that this was the world he lived in: people expected him to fall in lockstep with behavior whose purpose he didn't understand and in most cases couldn't follow through on, and when he made a mistake, he was instantly and horribly punished, and it had been that way for him since he was very little. It was no wonder we had behavior problems - he had no idea how things connected, and because he is very smart, everybody assumed he understood what he was supposed to do, so everyone reacted with shaming and anger when he made a mistake. For this reason, he became defiant, violent, had meltdowns - all because he couldn't express his confusion and nobody supported him. I wish I could go back and change it, but we are finally, in his teen years, able to break things down in ways he understands, and the defiant behavior has lessened considerably.

Autism is primarily a communication disorder. Your challenge as a parent is to figure out how to communicate things to your child, and how to understand what he needs and is trying unsuccessfully to express. He may not be able to do the things you are asking, and that may be what he is trying to say with oppositional behavior (we had a socks thing - for years I punished and yelled and rolled my eyes and just put the socks on him myself. I didn't understand that to my son, socks HURT. We finally took him to a store, bought a bunch of different socks, (after explaining the plan carefully) tried them all on there until we found a pair that worked for him - and those are the brand of socks he wears to this day.)

I have always found this article to be very helpful in understanding the differences in how an autistic child processes things vs how an NT adult does (or parent of any kind, really:) http://www.oneplaceforspecialneeds.com/ ... utism.html

Test it out - that same site has a lot of visual schedules and visual social stories that might be helpful.

It may well be that "no" is the only response your son can come up with that makes any sense to him, but he may well be trying to say "Those shoes hurt my feet" or "I'm scared of the noise the door makes" or "I just can't get my fingers to pick up the thing you told me to pick up" or "You've never listened to me before so why should I expect you to understand how important this is to me now?"

I know that you aren't ignoring your child and you're working as hard as you can - but he may not see it that way. It will take some time, first to figure out the miscommunication and second to build back his trust.

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I found this interesting. I disagree with this statement somewhat but wind up going the same direction as well in terms of important considerations.

My understanding of motivation is that it's a balance of Rewards for doing something vs the costs of doing something. When our subjective perception of the reward outweighs our perception of the cost, we are motivated. My advice emphasized the reward side of the equation while zette's emphasized the cost-side. Both are important to consider.

I agree with zette that there may be hidden costs for him in complying with your requests that you may be missing, such as missing skills that greatly increase the difficulty, sensory issues, or even undiagnosed biomedical issues that could be causing discomfort (how pleasant are you to be around when you've got the flu?).

Anyway, I just found that interesting that we can conceptualize things differently but wind up in the same place.

I only have a quick moment to reply to the thoughtful replies that have been posted so far. I hope to have more time later on.
Regarding the comments and questions about whether he's able to do the things we are asking of him- the issues that I'm speaking about are with things that he has been able to do before or has chosen to do on his own before. So nothing too difficult or new to him. I realize that there are some things he has a lot of difficulty with (that other 4 yos could do)- like the example a PP used of getting dressed. He has difficulty with this and other similar tasks but these things we work together on, and though frustrating for everyone as he does get upset and displays challenging behaviours during these tasks, these are not the things we would ever punish him for when he cannot accomplish them. We do offer lots of positive reinforcement for them though.
As far as the shoes thing- he's never had problems with shoes. I am more and more aware of his sensory issues and this does contribute to the problematic behaviours sometimes. But at those times that we aware of the causes of behaviour we try to mitigate whatever the sensory issue is and we're understanding. We'd never punish him for that and we try not to get frustrated when those things arise. The issue now is that things that he previously had no problems with, things he was happy about, things he could do and wanted to do and did all the time are causing us problems now. These are times that it is clear that he is choosing to misbehave or times that he is just feeling horrible and wants to act horribly. And I don't know why. I mean I know sensory things can change, and kids can regress in ways that may affect what they were able to do before but it doesn't seem like that's what happening here.

I don't have time right now to say much or read all the responses but just wanted to say I went through a lot of what you described (except I wasn't overseas and I have an only child, the thought of having another makes me want to hyperventilate) ... anyway a lot of what you describe reminds me of my son at that age ... he's 6 now and for us at least it was mostly just a phase, he's still challenging but nothing like he was at 4!

I think he might be overwhelmed from the progress he's been making with language and expression and is decompensating in other areas. (Here's a decent explanation of decompensation: http://www.disabilitybenefitscenter.org ... mpensation. It's in the context of adults applying for Social Security, but I'm sure you'll get the picture.)

I have a very difficult time doing things for myself even in my mid-twenties, and when I've pushed myself beyond what I usually do, even if it's just sending a few emails to people I don't know, I very often end up unable to do much of anything for a while. I just sit at my computer all day until I recover. Even something as simple as choosing what to eat might be too much for a while.

Sounds to me like mini-burnout. He needs a break and as little pressure on him as possible for a while.

Yes, he might be going through the terrible 2's at age four.

I matured slowly, which is one reason I fit in at age thirteen but not at age seventeen.

Sensory issues, plus do you allow him to privately stim? Even now at age fifty-one, I still stim privately. If you met me in public, you'd probably never know that I was on the Spectrum. To me, stimming is definitely part of the solution, helps me better handle sensory issues, kind of "centers myself," etc, at times almost the same benefit as a nap.

The problem with rewards and consequences model is that the parent or teacher becomes focused on trying to figure out what reward or consequence will change the cost dynamic enough in the right direction to get the child to change his behavior.

According to Ross Greene, who originated these ideas, you get more lasting improvement by switching your focus to identifying and solving the underlying problems that are causing the difficult behavior.

Forget what he "used to be able to do", and start observing intently to figure out why it is hard RIGHT NOW. Even better if you can get him to talk about what is making it hard. Even better if you can have the conversation later when he is calm, not in the moment while he is experiencing frustration or seeming stubborn.

My son also seemed to have the terrible twos hit around age 3.5. Shoes and tags never bothered him until suddenly they did in kindergarten.

We've also noticed that his general stress level tends to bleed over into other areas. Things he can normally do fine become insurmountable when he is stressed. So if you can look at his day to day life and figure out what us stressing him, that can make a big difference.

I can't tell you for sure if this will help, but a summer detox (from school stresses) may do much of the work for you. He had a rough year, and that may be part of your problems now. Last summer we had to forgo our usual un-schooling thing and give our son more non-educational relaxation time. It helped a lot.

I am not going to say we get 100% compliance now, even with the homeschooling; but it is tons better and I can actually see what the obstacles are to compliance.

I would suggest easing up drastically on your expectations, for now. I gave it a couple of months of detox before i started racheting the expectations, again.

Your mileage may vary.

I felt a lot like you when my son was that age. Unfortunately, it was just the beginning. But fortunately, it was a phase. From 3-6 were really difficult. As much as I hated to admit it, there were many times I struggled to like him at all. I actually bought an expensive lavender bath foam and kept it coming. Every night, he got a lavender bath and I smelled my favorite scent and got calm. Associating that with him got us through the difficult moments.

I think my parenting advice generally sounds a lot like what I think zette is saying.

However, in times of crises, I revert to "supper nanny" - style time out. NOT because it works (because it doesn't, not for my son), but because 1) doing nothing is worse; 2) I could remember/process what to do in the moment; and 3) when nervous about my kid looking like a brat, at least people see me doing something consistently about it.


All in all, the best thing to do is to get to the bottom of it and solve the real problems. If I were in your shoes, is probably choose a temporary solution to handle life on your upcoming trip and then get back to understanding the root issues when you get back.

He'll comply more if he feels like the adults understand him and can make things comfortable. For my daughter when the occupational therapist introduced swinging she became much happier.

It can be to bridge that chasm between language and physical action. Kind of like being dyslexic for doing things. I don't know if this is relevant, but to me, it seems like we add complexity to demands after children turn 3.

Not saying this is happening, but consider this scenario:
A child knows how to put on his shoes and knows how to put on his socks and knows how to put on his coat. So he is told to get his socks and shoes on and put on his coat, it's time to go. He understands each direction. And he understands the language, the words used. And he could follow a 3 step direction about some things. But now he needs to use the language communication part of his brain to understand and shift over to the action part of his brain. Only something isn't smooth in that transition for a lot of people with ASD, so he gets frustrated.

But to the adults watching, he understands what to do and he is throwing a fit instead of doing it. I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but I think for at least some people with ASD, what's happening inside is just as much or more frustration with the demand that he thinks he should meet and thinks he can meet only he can't.

I'm not sure I'm getting across what I mean when I say we are asking him to do things. I'm talking mostly about basic things that he's been doing everyday for months if not years, and things that he does very well and likes to do.
I'll give some examples: This morning my son asked for cereal for breakfast so I gave him some. As soon as I set it down on the table he said he didn't want it. Not wanting to press the issue (this is becoming the usual routine and when I get it into with him, asking what he does want it turns into him listing off things, asking for them and then saying that he doesn't want any of it) I didn't say anything and dropped the issue. A few minutes later he was acting bored and started whining so I suggested he colour in his new favourite colouring book. Set it out on his desk with crayons, he sat down and said he didn't want to that he wanted to eat cereal. So back to the table and he ate the cereal.
I know it doesn't sound awful in this particular example- but this is the way it is with every. little. thing. all. day. Instant refusal to everything, arguments. I'm generally NOT asking him to do things he has trouble with or doesn't want to do. Since this has been going on I've really eased up on anything challenging. We barely leave the house because as soon as we go anywhere it's a scene- he wants to go somewhere else or he wants to go home or as soon as we are out the door it's non-stop "I want to go home". But he still ASKS to go out to different places all the time. He basically refuses any food we give or offer him unless it's junk. Or it's a scenario like I described above where he is listing off things then instantly refusing them. He is constantly bored but won't do any of the fun things that he likes to do. If you suggest reading a book with him he'll say "I don't want to read THAT" etc etc.