Toddler behaviour in a much older child - help!

[Greydaysandrainbows]

My youngest is nearly 8. He has salt and some recall issues and an EHCP.
Recently - over the last 4 weeks his behaviour has verged on vile. I have older children (large age gap) and they walk to school together. He’s been vile to the elder and doing silly and dangerous things such as back chatting her whilst crossing a main road.
His behaviour has always been challenging. I’m a lone parent with little support and full time work. Lockdown was awful as I had to pin him to the table to do any work - but he made good progress but we will always have to do daily speech therapy, basic English etc at home - the nhs resources are not enough. He gets an hour a week but his speech therapists wants this repeated x3 minimum in the week. He won’t do any written task without me over him. Recently he fights (not physically) but bicker bicker bicker from the minute he gets up until the minute he goes to bed. He won’t do any homework (they get 40 mins to an hour a day from the school) without nagging, etc never mind empty a bin or anything. He huffs and puffs all day. This morning up and in dirty football shirt and shorts. It’s October and 6 degrees outside. We are isolating all day. He was told to go and put on a long shelved top and trousers, socks and slippers - a right temper tantrum happened. He then suggested he watch tv all day as he had nothing to do - what about your homework? He started crying. It’s not that he can’t do it. It’s a defence mechanism. He’s rather watch flies on the window sill then do anything. When he tries He can do it in minutes. He has help tidying his room and then within hours it’s a dump heap again. He’s asked to copy out a line of handwriting - I turn my back - he’s bloody vanished. I’ll look for him - he giggled and hides 🙄ffs it’s not like he doesn’t have toys etc or playtime but he’s just a bigger right now. We’ve tried rewards eg do homework and then you can have your kindle for 30 minutes but he’s rather arse about until after bedtime and then kick off as he hasn’t had a reward as he hasn’t done anything. He was doing football but I brought him a boot buddy and showed him how to clean them and he cried. I say we will help you but if you play football you must put dirty kit in the laundry basket (same for elder sibling) and he just cries then wonders off. I honestly don’t know what he does- looks into space, playing with you cars, sulking etc I thought I could manage this but I’m not coping and I don’t know why (this is the second weekend isolating for PCR) but even trying to get him to take his shoes off and put them by the door is impossible. He walks through the house and they when I see him he runs all through the house giggling when told off he starts crying and then I catch him smirking at me. Argh!! I raised other children and apart from the terrible 2/3 by the time they were 5 they were able to respond and communicate fine. I’m not asking him to cook dinner!

That sounds really hard going, you must be so stressed - and so must he. I think you are spot on when you say his acting up is a defence mechanism. Have you ever looked at Pathological Demand Avoidance? Kids with PDA have tantrums or run away when they are asked to do anything that is "extra" - even very simple things like getting a long sleeved top. And weirdly they aren't helped by rewards, rewards can even make their stress and avoidance worse.

This parents guide from the PDA Society has some suggestions about halfway down the page. There are some different ways to talk to him - like saying "it is cold so I wonder if you want to put on a long sleeve top" instead of just "put on a long sleeve top". My DS had an autism diagnosis but with a lot of PDA traits, and I found a lot of the strategies they suggest were helpful. I spent years finding a gazillion ways to get him to do things without saying "no" or "don't" because those were trigger words. I also used to pretend I didn't know how to do something and get DS to show me how - "I don't remember how to hold the pen, can you show me how do to write an A?" kind of thing. Kids do vary - I found that sometimes bribery did work for DS - I'd bribe him to do the very first bit of a task (like writing the first word!) and I'd pretend I didn't care if he did the rest or not, then once he'd done the first bit he would do all the rest no problem - but not every kid would do that.

I hope you find a way round some of your DS's problems - it can take a lot of trial and error.