Well it USED to be completely normal until government outlawed discipline, specifically the paddle. One quick whack accompanied with the words "SIMMER DOWN!" and most ADHD problems were quickly cured.

Have a teacher or school counselor talk to dad about it. Coming from you, it's just another "you hate my kids" thing.

Sorry, but he sounds like a typical boy of that age. It also sounds like his dad ignores him and he is starved for attention. My DS was SOO hyper at that age. It is just how you parent them. DS was disciplined for school infractions and by the time he was in third or fourth grad, he had calmed down a whole lot. I THANK GOD I NEVER DRUGED HIM UP!!
He is now almost 19. He has NEVER been in any trouble, he graduated with all A’s and B’s. He is in his first year of college. And holds down an almost, full time job. He also has a beautiful girlfriend.
SS was hyper also and he was ignored and put on drugs by the time he was 4 years old. SS STAYED in trouble for his entire school career. He went into military and hopefully that will correct a few of his problems.

Anywho…don’t be so quick to drug the kid up. He sounds normal to me. Now I know you are going to have a whole bunch of moms jump on here and tell you how perfect their little boys were and never got hyper and such. I don’t think it is the norm for a young boy to be perfect. lol

"DH doesn't take him outside to play either". There's your problem in a nutshell! I know you guys are saving for a bigger house but you also have to take care of the HERE AND NOW. This is typical boy behavior, somewhat magnified. Perfectson22 was like this minus the interupting and pouting. (not allowed in my house ). Almost every night DH took him out to a vacant lot (you have a park so even better) and fired baseballs at him, made him be both the hitter and the catcher, or kicked around the soccer ball, or just ran windsprints with him like a damned fool. You've got to tire boys out. And these workouts were never more than an hour, small price to pay for a tired little boy. My niece's son is 7,he's so wound up AFTER basketball practice her DH has to "wrestle" with him for at least 30 minutes!

Yea,the "excuse me" rule doesn't work,I had a friend that used that w/her son and everytime I went over to her place, by the time I left I wanted to kill her kid! lol I would use escalating punishment. 1st interruption-2 minutes in the corner. 2nd interruption-5 minutes in the corner, etc. They HAVE to learn to wait for a natural break in the conversation. And they don't have adult status,make that clear... THEY don't pay the bills! And the pouting thing would be easy with a boy IMO- just say "Oh SS your pouting like a girl, look at you! Let me go get a bonnet to put on your head" or " a skirt and pretty blouse for you"! I thought only GIRLS pouted like that"!

Me, my gf and her 6yo daughter live together. Your 7yo SS sounds a lot like my 6yo SD. If you look through some of my posts you will see a lot of behavioral problems matching up. She is in need of constant attention. She has to have the main stage at all times. If my gf and I are having a conversation she has to interrupt. It’s funny because I call her out on it. She will shout “please excuse me!” and we will give her our attention and then you can see she had nothing to say. I’ll call her out by saying “what. Now you got to make something up to say to justify your interruption?” my gf doesn’t like that… we have a babysitter that sits while my gf is there just to “entertain” her daughter so my gf can clean and do housework. Sd is attached to her mom at the hip if no one is around. As soon as the sitter leaves she will instantly say “I’m bored, where are we going tonight?” her mom has “activities and events” planned for almost every night so the 1 maybe 2 nights a weeks we have no plans sd complains of being bored…

So, what I want to say to you is that her daughter “tested on the autism spectrum”. Which means she supposedly has ASD. She is more normal than not. She acts more like a spoiled brat than anything. I mentioned to her mom, after countless hours of researching ADHD, that her daughter might be better off being “treated” for ADHD rather than ASD. She is just like your SS. She does show some ASD traits. But honestly the “spectrum” is so broad that everyone shows SOME asd traits.

Treatment” does not have to be medication. It can come in the form of changing the SS’s diet. Monitoring sleep patterns, setting more strict rules and consequences might help. Unfortunately, I have no kids. Most of my opinions don’t seem to count because of that.

Please check out some of my posts. We share a lot in common here and should stick together!

I do believe in ADHD. I also believe that way too many kids are medicated that don't truly have it.

I blame bad diets, lack of exercise and piss poor parenting.

Which makes a LOT of COD have the same symptoms as those with ADHD/ADD

Im wondering about a few different things just to get a better understanding of your situation. Does your SS consume much sugar, caffeine, his over all diet, a healthy appetite, or if he eats like a bird? My husband & I have worked with hyper active kids what not & there are things you can do without needing to drug them up. Wondering also where the BM stands in the picture if she does? I cant imagine how you must feel or if it seems like your dealing with your SS as a single parent without any legal rights.

Our best friends have boys oldest is 9 & he has ADHD. On medication during the school week which they all seem to like & off his medication during the weekends. We watch the kids from time to time & it takes my DH & I about an hour or two before this kid starts to calm down. We have observed how their parents handle this boy & have learned that he actually attempts to run his parents. Great kids & great parents but even the best of parents can be blind.

I feel that the best help you can get, needs to come from your DH. Understand he has a busy life but he had time to make a family & boys need their dad ADHD or not. Perhaps your SS can sit down each day as he works on any given project in the same room as your DH? Allowing the dad to see just how hard it is for his son to sit quiet let alone focus.

Sounds a lot like my son who has ADHD. I don´t medicate him, but he has lots of help from myself and at school. I am very careful what he eats (low sugar, no additives, plenty of Omega 3) and I try and always make sure he has activities to keep him busy. It is hard work, for sure, but these kids cannot help it -it is like they are driven by a motor inside.

Anyone who thinks ADHD doesn´t exist has not ever lived with a child who has it. My son sometimes cries his eyes out because he says he can´t remember where he put things or because he thinks people don´t like him because he talks too much. He hates himself sometimes because he wants to be still and quiet but he just cannot do it.

There is no sense saying you can discipline a hyper kid out of being hyper...you can´t, but you can help them.

A fantastic book for disciplining a kid like this is "1,2,3 magic". It helped me enormously. Also get the kids to be active physically...just one hour a day of intensive exercise can really calm them. Get them interested in a quite activity - my son loves drawing and will do it for hours quietly.

they do eventually learn, it just takes longer. They do calm down as they get older.

This is a labour of love, and I salute you for finding the energy to help in parenting a child with additional needs

x

Sounds just like my DS8 who has ADHD. I get really fired up at people who think ADHD is just a label, that all an ADHD kid needs is more spankings, harder spankings, better parenting. It is a very real mental issue,, the problem is teachers and parents with normal, high energy, intelligent kids who don't want to deal with them and will do anything to drug them up so they don't have to deal with them.

I went through six years of my son being in constant (I mean CONSTANT) motion, there was never one part of his body that was still for even a few minutes. Constant noise as well. He couldn't be quiet. He was either talking or making sound effects, but never quiet. I am a strict parent, I keep my son involved in sports and make sure he spends as much time as possible outside engaged in physical play, and it still wasn't enough to really wear him out. It is exhausting to parent a truly ADHD child. And it isn't just their energy and noise levels, it is a lack of ability to organize, forgetfulness, impulsiveness. Parenting my one child felt like parenting five. I could keep all three of my neices for a weekend and not work as hard as I did between picking my son up from daycare and putting him to bed.

Now, I have full respect for going the all natural treatment route and know people who have done it with varying success. For my son, I chose to use a low does of medication to help take the edge off in school. This was the best option for my family.

Perhaps, as others have mentioned, if you could have the child's teachers or the school counselor broach the subkect with your DH it would go over better. I understand how you feel, it is such a job parenting a child with ADHD, I can't imagine trying to handle it as a SM.

ADHD really is fabricated, and mostly NEVER a child's fault. A kid with behavior problems at home can behave when disciplined at school. When they are also getting in trouble at school, it's not about discipline, it's about biology. Kids are eating crap that makes them act this way; actually it's more that they are not getting the nutrients they need to KEEP from acting this way. Too many processed foods, artificial colors, sugar, etc. Kids need more nutrient dense foods and LOTS more omega-3 fatty acids. All kids need vitamin/mineral supplements of some kind. Only after feeding kids properly (parents!) can kids then be disciplined properly (parents!) so that the kid can control his own behavior when appropriate (THIS is the kid's responsibility).
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/adhd/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=10...

Aka...DISCIPLINE...

Only give attention on your terms. By that I mean:

he opens his mouth....go to your room

He wants entertainment/ says hes bored...put a rag in his hand and show him to clean mop etc.

Include him in your activities. Cooking, laundry, cleaning. Grocery shopping(.....maybe not this one lol). Occupy his hands doing useful things. 

Send him to his room to play. He comes down too early then he gets an unpleasant chore to do.

Have you guys sat down with him and set some house rules delineating and enforcing appropriate behavior?

Some behaviors should have negative consequences. 

About the ADHD 7yo is too early to diagnose bc most kids that age have adhd tendencies.

Asd can be diagnosed early but it is not always medicated.

My advice is for you to do some research about Adhd nehavior modification. Then if apllicable start implementing with Ss.

When the pseudo-science otherwise unemployable semi-professional make shit up to justify their existance crowd started the syndrome of the month club movement to justify their otherwise waste of skin existance, idiot parents had ready made excuses for their failed breeding experiements and the smoke and mirrors they need to parade their ill behaved spawn in public.

Even more tragic was when government decided to accept the pseudo-science crap and start to interfere in parenting.

Funny how when a trip the the woodshed for a meeting with the razor strop was how parents dealt with ill behaved children there were very few ill behaved children.  Public melt downs were rare, juvenile delinquency was rare, and parents would not pollute their communities with ill behaved spawn because the communty would not tolerate either the idiot parent or the ill behaved spawn. 

The meeting of pseudo-science idiots and idiot parents made the perfect environment for the current epic ill behaved child shit storm.

Sadly.

Some kids need help and forturneately there are some effective therapists and medical professionals that can help those that actually need professional help.   Most of them just need a paddle to the butt to connect their brains to good behavior.

All IMHO of course.