7yo DS - external help?

[tostaky]

My 7yo DS1 has always been a handful - since day 1. Very demanding, always winging... Very competitive and wanting to be the centre of attention (talks louder/over others/ physically comes between me and other people when I am talking and not paying attention to him etc..).
He is super active, always fidgeting, always full of beans. He has this tendency of low-level bullying (ate his brothers chocolate advent calendar the other day, destroyed the arrangement of beads his brother made despite being told three times not to, being generally bullish)

What saves him is that he can concentrates super well and is super bright at school (what teachers have always said and always gets extension work etc..)

I have two other DS and they are wonderfully behaved compare to him!!!

I just don't know what to do anymore. The thing I would like to resolve would be to help him show respect to his peers.
I/we have explained to him hundreds of time, we've got books too, we've tried rewards, sticker charts, praising and I feel nothing has worked...

I am considering getting external help - but I am not too sure where to start... I asked the GP once already and got referred to a parenting course run by the council... The other families had much bigger problems (drugs, violence etc..) than I so i did not benefit from it so much.

I am not too sure what I am looking for though... I was looking at the website of a company which did a talk at preschool (I couldn't go and anyway I don't have problem with my toddler or even my 5 yo). Still I looked up their website and that company has different services like speech therapy/art therapy/psychological support etc...

Reading the description of their services, I don't feel there is anything relevant to my case...

I don't know whether my parenting skills are rubbishy and I'm just lucky with my other two sons or if the problem really comes from DS1 and in which case I am unable to identify it as it is so subtle yet so disruptive...

Looking back over his seven years, were there any trauma or big changes - other than the arrival of his two brothers - that might have unsettled him? Is Dad around?

See if you can isolate when things got worse. You are fortunate if the two younger boys are better behaved; do you manage to treat them all more-or-less in the same way? Are the younger ones distressed by DS1's behaviour?

Thanks Fergusson.
No, no shocks or anything special. He has always been a pita!!! As a baby, always crying, never sleeping, always grumpy... As a toddler, huge tantrums, never sleeping, super active....now, grumpy, doesn't sleep before 10-10.30pm, never ever brush his teeth without threatening him, constant low-level annoyance.

Dad is here and present and very good :-) we also have an au-pair. I don't work. But no family in UK.

I do feel sometimes I can't spend enough time with the other twos as I am constantly explaining, arguing, threatening, reminding DS1. Like on Monday I forgot DS3 show and tell as I was too busy calming down DS1 and explaining respect to him. He stormed out after I told him not to mess up his brothers bead arrangements for the third time (he put a mechanical Santa in the middle of the beads repeatedly breaking his brother arrangement)

"Little" things like this - nothing major - but it is constant, constant, constant... Also he teases other and playing with him turns quickly to rough play and jumping on furniture, arguing (as he doesn't share with his 3 yo brother... He doesn't seem to understand he is older so he needs to "oil" his relationship.

He is the bad kid and they are the good kids- so what does he have to lose/gain ? Reward charts work with c who have various kinds of behavioural difficulties if they are set up with a reward that the child really wants, are rewarded very easily at first , are consistently followed by everyone, are not punished for behaviour that does not follow the plan - but do not get the reward obv,attention is consistently +ve= say nothing and show no response on face or body when provoked for -ve attention. This is VERY hard work and everyone must be on board including the au pair and the other c. Your goal is to find excuses to reward not punish. It is worth the hard work as the alternative is way worse. You will have to be there to know if everyone is following the program.