We have the same issue with the "Bakugun" - and even though DS6 is still 6, I don't see him outgrowing the whole melt down over losing a fair game anytime soon. Do you guys have other suggestions on how to get him to achieve this?
We are so far thinking that tutor time should include games with rules. He's still a very sore loser - at anything and everything and wants to win all the time - whether riding bikes, or racing lego cars - and he is an "only" - so even harder for him to be used to coming last. He even turned diving into the pool into a "competetive" sport - he's always yelling out what dive he is going to do to get attention and wants people looking at him - it's like this "huge perfromance". Then 2 weeks ago he started trying to jump the line at the board - and all the older kids got mad at him. He's ultimatey driving people away as much as he attracts children and adults alike to him.
I've seen the victim mentality get worse this month - both over computer games - when he can't beat the computer (!) and when I've put him in time out for being rude. I get the whole embarrassing spiel in public "You hate me, you don't love me, you've never loved me since I was a baby, you don't want this or that for me, it's not fair" ...and blah, blah. I know it's a melt down and that he's going to snap out of it as long as I don't verbally engage him and prolong the agony. He always calms down and apologises. ButI just don't get where the whole "I'm such a victim" thing comes from. And the manipulation of the whole "you don't love me/guilt thing" just seems so intensely crazy coming from a 6 yr old. He'll also start in with the "Fine, well if I can't do this/that - then we are leaving and I'm never coming here again". I've seen him do this with kids too - if they won't play like he wants - he'll often just say "We aren't playing anymore" - or Saturday he started yelling at a child taht he was tupid because he didn't undrstand the game and he ended up punching the air in front of the child thought he didn't actually hit him. When I pull him aside- it's like he's trying to be the adult and pull all the power.
I've gotten to the point where I can contain myself and gently remind him that he can't make those decisions, sorry, he's not the adult or I'll just say "Fine, okay - you want to leave" - gently - not sarcastically - and then he'll start with a 2nd meltdown about how he didn't really mean it. It's just so immature on the one hand - and so scarily "mature/ascyhronous" on the other. I mean, this is the kind of meltdown I expect from a "freaking out" teeanger you know ..not a little kid. If someone could say to me for sure "he'll grow out of it" I'd be fine. But I've seen his step sister melting down up to the age of 11 with full body tantrums - all be it in different life circumstances/household - so sometimes I wonder if it's genetic or just linked to their async intellect somehow?
