My son has been doing really well socially for several months but had a pretty big public meltdown yesterday. He's been playing on a flag football team (after begging and begging to play flag football), and he's been relatively successful playing in this recreational league. Sports are a special interest for him, so he's really engrossed in the rules and history of the game. I don't always love his attitude while playing--he thinks he is better than he is and doesn't hold a lot of grace for the other players. It's been going well enough that he even was "Player of the Week" in this recreational league he's been playing on. Well, yesterday, in the final game of the day, he blew up at the refs. One of the opposing players hit him hard, perhaps accidentally, and the refs didn't call the "illegal contact" rule. He came completely unglued, throwing his gloves, throwing his flags, and pulling off his shirt. He shouted at them that they were terrible refs, screaming and turning bright red. He flipped everyone there the bird and started kicking things. When I finally got him calm enough to walk to the car with me, he broke down crying in the car. He said he was never going to amount to anything. He said, "there are no jobs for people like me. Nobody would ever hire someone like me because of this." So he's conscientious enough to know that his meltdown behavior goes too far. It's been a while since I've seen him melt down quite this far, so I thought it was perhaps maturing away. I desperately want to bring him hope for a future. He is incredibly bright. He's been accepted into an honors program for next year that does college-like seminar classes. I could see him having a future in so many fields, but we do need to keep improving our emotional regulation tools.

Posted by RevDrR8chL at 2023-05-22 10:42:15 UTC