hey nellie -thanks for your message, i SO appreciate it. i feel a bit less isolated immediately! my daughter was a 30-weeker too and similarly had no major probs in scbu tho plenty of apnoeas, bradys and other scary episodes as you mention too. so much of what you write is so familiar. i am a flippin' expert in neurotic and obsessive traits in children!!! argh. i can zoom back in time so easily to when my daughter was 4. we had just moved to australia (we spent a couple of years dowm under recently, back in uk now)and i can honestly say it was the toughest, most harrowing year of my life, sun or no sun!! this bcs her tantrums and attention-seeking were at their most intense that year. she, like your son, hugely needed/still needs to feel she controls things. massive tantrums were always the result otherwise. she was also at her most anxious - taking ages to fall asleep, constant demands for reassurance etc, frequent night wakings (i remember once shuttling between both kids 8 times one night - nothing to do with illness!). her focus was monsters rather than robbers but all the same sort of thing.attention-seeking the most difficult thing i think, bcs her bro was 2 yrs younger and obv needed a lot of input too. she was also terrible at sharing (getting better but still not keen!!) - i felt constantly torn between them and was in tears a lot that year i recall!! what i found so difficult too was that no-one really wants to know or can help - bcs, as you've probably noticed too - all the problems are theoretically those of 'normal' children too except that with her, and by the sound of it with your little boy, it's NOT normal, it just doesn't feel like a slightly exacerbated version of what everyone else is going through, which is what GPs and HVs etc try to tell you (i'm a GP myself and i am in a good position to KNOW GPs don't have all the answers, as a result!!!). she looks normal and is academically bright and is always much better controlled in the school environment than at home. i went on a parenting course while in oz to try to deal better with the tantrums (she was at pre-school at this stage) and it was very hard to put the advice into practice bcs i had a feeling that there was more to these tantrums than simple toddler willfullness and a pavlovian-style response (putting in a room for ages etc - all of which we did do) seemed not quite appropriate. i sort of muddled through with a mixture of time-out-ing and compassion - very fine tightrope to walk. bcs i could see she didn't know what the hell was going on when she launched into one of her fifty fits - it was as unenjoyable for her as for us - and felt for her so much even as i rued the situation and felt anger, despair etc over the effect on our family life!
like you, having a term baby next was such a contrast for us and quite reassuring too - not just a 'weak parenting' issue after all, the tantrums, attitude and negativity!!! her brother is much more stable, much calmer and mellower and happier in himself. an extrovert too - in contrast to her introversion.
what i can say is that age, and in our case, going to school, does improve things - at 7 she is calmer for longer periods now, and is happier generally. reading books is her - and our - lifesaver, she is a massive bookworm and we herd her into her room with a pile of books when she gets out of control nowadays and that helps to calm her. our moving around the globe didn't help at all - she hates change, as we discovered to our cost as a family! she needs stability and needs to know what is happening. she has learned to discuss her emotions and verbalise them. but we still have a lot of problems, esp with trying to teach her new skills, swimming, cycling, even telling the time - all of that stuff is going to take way longer than is the norm and i think i just have to accept that.
did you ever read a book called 'raising your spirited child'? (mary sheedy kurcinka) it is the only childcare manual i ever found that was of some help - bcs 'spiritedness' by the author's definition did cover some of my little girl's behavioural traits and by the sound of it some of your son's. the others i found of very limited use i must say. we also once asked a private psychologist to assess her but that was a waste of time too - she didn't have much to add that i couldn't have learned from a book or didn't know already. sigh. it's just a bit of a lonely experience at times i find!! thanks for writing and keep in touch! kate