We're struggling with DS1 (8) at the moment. He has been diagnosed with moderate to severe dyslexia and school has always been a challenge for him but he is having such a difficult time and making our lives hard too. He has turned into an unhappy child.
He is reasonably ok friendship wise. He doesn't have any good friends but he does hang out with his peers. He has one boy who I think is bullying him - name calling, fault finding, etc. - which the school are on to - but I would just like to cheer him up basically and have better behaviour.
He can't read social situations at all - e.g. DD1 was feeling tired and tearful the other evening and just when I'd cheered her up he hid behind a door and jumped out at her - cue more tears from her and him stropping off (because his good intention had gone wrong). Similarly, with playing he doesn't understand how to enter games. At home, he barges into games - he is too physical with the younger ones so invariably within a few minutes of playing someone starts crying.
He's always very defensive, aggressively so - everything is everyone else's fault - and yet he can't resist doing things he knows he shouldn't. If a room full of children are told not to touch the matches, he would do it. Similarly, if a group of children are told not to do something - he would be the one left when the children have spotted a teacher and run off. And he would misread this thinking he had 'won'.
I like to think that we try to do positive reinforcement, set a good example, treat all the children equally but he is such hard work. Out of the 4 children, he probably has about 70% (or more) of our time and he is the one we have to think about as kind of damage limitation in our activities - e.g. what is there for him to do? will he behave? - and it makes me dread the holidays when I have the 4 of them together, e.g. I can't trust him to stay/not play with the salt/not make DD1 cry if I have to leave the table to change a nappy; he won't leave a playground when it's time to go, etc.
DD1 (18 months younger and his best friend) yelled this morning 'I am so nice to him and he is so horrible to me'. I hate having his siblings view him like that.
It sounds like we don't love him but him being such hard work - especially when he makes one of our other children upset - means that we are losing the ability to like him some of the time. But we do love him and it makes us feel miserable seeing him unable to interact, have fun, etc. Basically we want him to have a happy childhood.
So... for those who have/had a 'difficult' child, how do/did you turn things around?