Normal; Normal Plus!

I was reading over what I just posted and I thought, "I bet a lot of people would read that and say, 'Oh, that's normal for a six year old.'"

Here's the thing, though, with adopted kids with a troubled background, normal behaviors are taken to an extreme. Yeah, being defiant is normal. But, other parents are meaning every now and then - a few times a week of on-going defiant behavior. I mean hours at a time. Some times most of the day for months - although that was more common in the beginning than it is now. Now it's hours at a time for a few days and then we'll usually have a good one. And it's only hours at a time, rather than all day.

And Max isn't just defiant. He's also aggressive. He's also rude. He's also trying to piss us off (he admits to this).

I see the difference in him between a day that he's just being a kid and and day where he's being pissed off kid plus. Yes, we still sometimes get defiance, sometimes there's misbehavior (kicking a ball where he shouldn't or whatever), but it's not the same. I can totally handle normal kid days.