I am feeling very down and at a loss with how to tackle my son's behaviour. At school, at home and at outside school activities, he point blank refuses to follow direct instruction. He is already being 'labelled' as a difficult child, who will fall behind because of his behaviour. As you can imagine I am finding this very distressing. I am also a single parent - so have nobody else to share this task with. I also blame myself.
My son also finds it impossible to talk softly or normally and shouts in normal conversation.
Any advice?????

First of all it has nothing to do with you been an lone parent . You are not to blame .I am a married stay at home mum of three kids . Their ages are 7,2,1. We also have problems with our eldest son . Same kinda problems you are going through. He is so hyper he split his head open in school just 2 weeks ago trying to run out of the classroom. have you gotten his ears checked . If you havent i think you should. the newest thing we have tried is sitting him down tell him how upset we are when he is bold and how proud we are when he is good. If he is bold you send him to his room with no toys or fun things . And if he is good make a big fuss of him and see how that works . At the minute talking to him seems to be getting him be good at school . But we have been down this road so many times we just have to keep our fingers crossed. I hope you get it sorted soon. Good luck

Hi. Just posted my own message and happened to see yours . Just a suggestion , but have you had his hearing checked ? Couldn't hurt to give it a try.

My 5 year old daughter is behaving the same way. She will sometimes take instruction, sometimes not. Unfortunately she is very stubborn and needs most requests to be shouted to her after on average ten attempts of asking nicely, which I feel makes me just as bad as her.

She also shouts all the time and I am constanting asking her not to shout. We had her hearing test about 12 months ago and were told she had hearing loss in one of her ears. The option of gromits was offered but we declined as in most cases the hearing difficulty makes itself good again and there is also and not a guarenteed chance that the gromits will work. We just felt it was alot to put her through at the time.