behavioral issues

[Guest guest]

hi all,

I don't post much and have not been keeping upp with this list much

as my 2 boys have kept me running a lot lately, but I have a couple

of questions. My five year old son has been having a horrible year

in preschool this year--and he goes to a special needs preschool. He

has been making choices to not follow directions (and we know they

are choices as he had been able to follow them previously and will

soemdays follow direction and some days not), has been throwing

tantrums, intentioanlly annoys other children to get a rise out of

them, has been being VERY defiant to teachers, bus drivers, and at

home as well. I have tried so many things, I am at my wits end.

He was in teh same classroom withthe same teracher and most fot he

same kids for his first year of preschool last year 06-07, and was a

little golden child. This year he has been a holy terror. I am so

nervous about him starting kindergarten in the fall. We started him

on Prozac in December for his perseverating issues and it made a

WORLD of difference in that area--he does not open and close doors

compulsively and repetatively anymore, does not repeat the same

phrase over and over anymore, and he actually tries to think about

the question that is asked and come up with a real answer (as opposed

to his memorized pat answers to common questions). But the medicine

has had no effect on his behavior. We also recently took him off his

steriod medicine that he has been on for asthma since last September

hoping that perhaps it was a side effect of that medicine. And while

he is less hyper and more able to focus than he had been, he remains

defiant and uncooperative unless full engaged one on one in

something that interests him.

He is reading at a second grade level, loves computer games, and

enjoys math--so academically I have no worries. But he has just

become such a HUGE handful to manage--more so at school than at home,

though I have become a more strict mom than I even thgought I would

be just to try to reign in some of the chaos. He definately has

solid black- & -white thinking, there are no grey areas, which is hard

as life is full of sitational grey areas.

Do any of you have any suggestions on how to curb the defiance and

the intentional misbehaving (some things that he does are not

intentional, just midly irritating, those do not bother me (even if

they bother some of the teachers) but there are times he will

misbehave intentionally, and if you ignore it, he escalates the

behavior to the point that either he or some one else could get hurt--

so that is not an option. Any suggetions any of you have would be

uber helpful.

Thank you,