Parenting: Adapting to new sibling arrival

Okay, my six-year-old son is very mean.

My son is the youngest of four much older children, from 23 down to 16, one girl, three boys.

Two of the older children don't live at home.

One lives abroad, and the other is in college.

I'm a full-time stay-at-home mother, and my husband works a very busy and demanding job, so he is only home at the weekend.

My son is a loving, caring, kind, very empathetic, highly in tune with his and others' emotions.

He requires a lot of attention and love on a continuous basis.

He has never been able to play by himself.

He loves to be active, and he loves to help me with whatever I do.

I'm exhausted, physically and emotionally.

I absolutely adore my little boy, and he's a very special child.

He has a high intelligence, but his demanding nature is very demanding on me and my husband.

He has a wonderful relationship with my husband.

My husband is very patient and very loving and caters, in brackets, a little too much to his every need.

His mean streak has taken on a whole new dimension this summer.

He calls us names, has started saying small lies, says stuff like, "Do you really think you're smart? You're not.

I am.

You're so stupid." He told his dad I said my ex-boyfriend was much better looking than his father, in brackets, not true.

He says he hopes we break up, our house is so stupid, our cars are the worst, his life is the worst.

"You should put cream on your face so nobody can see your lines and cracks." There is so much more, but I just can't think of all the stuff he says.

I reply by saying, "That's not very nice," "Nobody talks to you like that," or, "That hurts my feelings." I've seen signs of this mean behavior with his friends in social situations from time to time.

What can I do to help my son? The meanness is not his true nature, and that makes it hard for me to understand him at the moment.

How can I handle this situation before this trait becomes him?

Oh, it's a lot in there, isn't it?

[sighs]