Long time lurker, NC’d for this. Sorry it’s a long one
DS(11) is wonderful, funny, kind and sensitive, has a good network of friends, has made a great start to secondary school, is achieving well and no issues with his behaviour outside of the home.
We love him so very much, however we’re having a hard time parenting him at the moment now he’s hitting the pre-teen stage.
He’s always displayed a lot of repetitive behaviours at home. He makes lots of loud/silly noises or just repeats himself over & over again. He often interrupts, talks at us rather than to us, and rarely checks he has our attention first before he blurts it all out. He has a tendency to obsess over certain things he is interested in, and will talk really fast and animatedly about his interests but quickly loses interest if you talk to him about something else. So DS often gets told off for being rude when he does any of this stuff (generally multiple times a day).
He still jumps and dives around the house like a 5 year old would - on & off the furniture, and is constantly banging into things & hurting himself because he doesn’t pay attention. He can’t sit still (unless he is gaming). He is on the floor, off the floor, on the sofa, standing on his head, upright, upside down again, climbing up the door frames. We are constantly telling him to slow down, stop jumping on the furniture, go outside on the trampoline, makes not a blind bit of difference. He is constantly covered in bruises.
If we play a family board game he cannot sit still while he waits his turn, he will roll around or stand on his head or fiddle with something. He has to surround himself with stuff and fiddle/mess about with it at all times. He gets told off for getting distracted or messing about when it’s his turn. He said to me yesterday he finds it really hard to pay attention (though amazingly he manages fine at school).
He is an extremely picky eater and basically lives off chicken nuggets, pasta, tomato ketchup, Yorkshire puddings, pizza, bread & cereal plus of course crisps & biscuits. Beige junk food. He will not entertain trying new foods so there are often arguments about that. He also eats his food off his fork like a lollipop rather than cutting it. DH hates this and so constantly reminds him throughout dinner to use his cutlery properly because if we let him eat in that way he is not learning appropriate table manners for outside the home.
DS is really disorganised/scatty and is always losing or forgetting stuff when packing his school bag in the morning. He will take his bag upstairs to put a book in it, then bring it back down then go back up to put his socks on, he doesn’t seem to realise to do all the upstairs jobs in one go to save him having to go up & down repeatedly. DH gets frustrated as cannot understand his logic & says it’s like DS has no common sense.
DS gets really angry and upset if asked to do something he doesn’t want to do e.g. tidy his room and will start slamming doors or throwing his things around. Consequences for violent outbursts is usually loss of screen time plus he will still have to do the chore.
If he struggles with a piece of homework, rather than asking for help he will get really angry throw his school books or stationery across the room, say he’s useless, headbutt the floor, drag his hands down his face or smack himself in the head and cry. He generally has this response if he gets upset about anything and always defaults to hurting himself or saying horrible things about himself. It’s heartbreaking to watch because he is not useless, he is wonderful, but he won’t listen to any amount of reassurance and just gets more and more worked up.
DH in particular, is finding this extremely frustrating to live with at the moment. He has a tendency to constantly correct DS/tell him off or criticise him for many of these things. Don’t get me wrong I do tell DS off too but more often than not, it is DH. We feel like we’ve been saying the same things for YEARS and it never makes a blind bit of difference.
DS has confided in me he finds this upsetting so I said to DH the constant criticism is not good for DS as it could adversely affect his self esteem and I also worry it will damage DH’s relationship with DS (he’s always been the favourite parent) but DH’s argument is how else do we correct him or parent him without telling him when he has done something wrong?
DS is now becoming extremely rude in how he speaks to us, and there are lots of arguments happening on a daily basis. This came to a head yesterday when DS shouted at DH that all he hears is negative things about himself, never anything positive 
.
That made me want to cry - it’s horrible to think that he would feel like that & I’ve barely slept worrying how we can get things on track.
Anyway here’s our problem - we can’t agree how to parent this. I prefer ‘ignore the undesirable behaviour and just focus punishment on the more serious stuff) but DH thinks this is me just turning a blind eye to it all and how will his behaviour improve if we ignore these things as he will just keep on doing them. Obviously we need to show a united front which we’re not doing at the moment. I often find myself jumping to DS’ defence and I know it’s not good for me to not back up DH but how do I do that when we disagree. So how do we move on from here? Are there any other approaches we could take?
Finally, so as not to drip feed, yes we have considered possible sensory/ASD/ADHD in the past - was dismissed by school as he has no issues there. GP won’t do anything unless school see a problem. So for now he is undiagnosed and likely to remain that way.