This is interesting, but I think there is more to the story here. The sad truth is that even with the best of intentions there are circumstances where even the fully attached, caring parent knows better but is so overwhelmed that knee jerk reactions can and do happen. Even highly intelligent parents, who may very well have intensity issues all of their own, say and do things they don't intend to that make things difficult. Some simply do not have an idea of "age appropriate" expectations are. Especially when your academically advanced 5 year old emotionally acts like a 2 year old. And even when you do have an understanding of it, it doesn't make the experience of a child's issues any easier to bear if there are 10 meltdowns in a given day over the course of 3-4 days over seemingly inconsequential things , like opening up the granola bar package the wrong way.
You described me and my issues with DS5.5's outbursts!!! Like him, I have intensity issues and often find myself kicking my own self for my reactions. This only leaves both of my DC nothing but confused.
I used to go to bed crying sometimes because I couldn't figure this out. Out of my 3 girls, she was the only one to be so intense and have issues, so I know it wasn't my parenting skills. It wasn't a "goodness of fit" mismatch between my temperament and hers. We just so happened to have very similar emotional intensities. My own mom failed to show me how to deal with them, so at 38 years old I had to learn alongside her.
I took her to a neuropsych to help...and her best advice was about teaching her to recognize and cope with her emotions using social stories along with some SPD therapy I did at home and ballet and yoga to help calm her and working on what she learned between meltdowns. Oh, and feeding her protein and building in a lot of downtime after social interactions (for both of us!).
It has helped a great deal. Not that we don't ever have issues, but nothing to the degree we once had.
