agressive behavior

I have a twin son whom is hearing impaired.He has a moderate hearing loss with hearing aids. He is not communicating well with his brothers. He seems to really pick,wrestle and grab his twin brothers face! He scratches him. I have tried to get him to stop this behavior with time out. Is he wanting my attention? He will do this when I am not in the room. Help! I am at my witts end.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

It is not likely that your son is motivated by a bid for your attention, though of course I cannot say what his motivation is. If you are consistent with your intervention - i.e., time out for any such occurrence - you will see progress over time. Depending on the age of the kids, you may have to increase the amount of direct supervision of their time together in order to obviate some of this problem.

You are correct in trying to figure out what might be motivating him. Behavior is purposeful in the sense that it doesn't occur randomly. He's behaving in an angry fashion, and directs that anger toward his brother. See if you can hypothesize about why that might be happening, and bring the kids into the discussion.

[Misty]

Dear Ruth,
My oldest son who is now 16 has a moderate to profound hearing loss. Hearing impaired children are very visual, has I'm sure you already know. My son used too and still does this jumping around and wrestling thing with his brother who is 13 now..Not so much the jumping around . But he does get into wrestleing matches. You didn't say how old your sons were. My younger son even used to speak for the older one. 1 yr of counsling and 9 yrs later he still does it sometimes. Auroa is a wonderful program. They have support groups for parents and summer programs for the hearing impaired. Part of my sons problem was he had never really been around others like him. So it makes it hard for them to identify with others including peers and siblings. They know they are dif. some even deny that they are dif.( My son has refused to wear hearing aides for 5 yrs now.) Good luck to you and your family..