hi chris
we've had experience with this type of thing first hand with my DS7. He would have these extreme outbursts with anything negative. If we asked him how his day at school went, it was bad, bad, bad. Baseball was a nightmare-every out was either crying or storming around. This went on since he was about 4.. Finally I called the school psychologist and she said that she had observed Zachary many times at school handling disappointments appropriately. When I told her we were looking at possibly getting him diagnosed with depression she said it just didn't fit. She felt it was manipulation and she used the following word which made me really listen "PROVOCATIVE".. he is being more and more provocative.. **We were also doing the whole thing where he wrote about his feelings, etc etc. this would go on for a long long time. She told us to stop this immediately..She suggested the following, which is how they had been dealing with him at school with great success:
1)Don't ask the question he is expecting when he gets off the bus (or whenever)="How was school?"..
2) Create a catch phrase that signals you're not going to become engaged. We say "thanks for telling me, lets move on"..
2) In sports/activity situations, avoid letting him see you are watching. We always sat where he could see us in the dugout.. This year we switched to the bleachers (with everyone else) and the behavior stopped when he realized we weren't watching, and the coach was not going to become "engaged" like we had.
These methods worked brilliantly, but we did see an "extinction burst" the first day or so..When i didn't ask "how was your day" you could tell he was really thrown and kept following me around and blurting out stuff. I just said "thanks for telling me, lets move on".. We were warned about this and were really excited when it happened. Then success.
I wish you luck, this can be really difficult.
irene
