Do all 7yos have this attitude?

[tiara76]

My 7yo ds has such a bad attitude, it is driving my DH and I up the wall. He is just not a nice person to be around and my DH says that while he loves ds, he finds it hard to like him a lot of the time.
He is a very competitive child, which I think maybe due to over doing the whole praise thing, have we given him an inflated ego?? I don't see anything wrong with being competitive, as long as you are respecting other people, can be humble and accept that you cannot always win. When at football practice, he shouts at his team mates when they fail to pass or do anything that he deems not good enough, throwing his arms up in the air and rolling his eyes. It's the same when he has friends over. Whether they are playing outside or inside, if things don't go his way, or he doesn't get the answer he wants, it's someone else's fault and this horrible, sarcastic tone comes out. I just keep thinking, if it was someone else's child and I seen them behaving like that, I would just be thinking, what a horrible little boy.
I have tried talking to him about how he should treat people, about respecting others and their opinions, about encouraging his team mates and knowing when to just keep quiet. I have spoken about ways he can calm himself down when he feels himself getting annoyed or angry. We have tried time out and taken things away from him. It all has short term impact and I am at my wits end. I just don't know how to help him to change.
Any suggestions, experiences, help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

[ancientbuchanan]

Whenever DS was like this there was one of two reasons,

Testosterone surge, around this time
Unhappiness, usually at school, usually because friendships were dodgy' sometimes because he didn't get on with his teacher.

A long car trip chatting with no eye contact, a long walk, washing up together, and saying what's up, yôu seem a bit uncertain about things normally extracted the issue.

[Andro]

I think it's fairly common to have some issues around this age. We had it with ds, moving up a group in karate rubbed the worst of the rough edges off of him fairly rapidly. He'd had a huge rush of strength and aggression he didn't know what to do with, masses of exercise and very firm boundaries (even when they made things harder at first for everyone) got us through it.

The good news is this too shall pass, the bad news is it often returns at about 10yo!

[Sapat]

Yep DD (7.5) is the same, drives me insane! I have 3 kids, she is the worst.

[tiara76]

You have no idea how relieved I am to hear all this!!
Will up his exercise and sign him up to another club besides his obsession-football. We will also try some of your techniques ancientbuchanan. Andro, I am choosing to ignore the 10yo part of your comment!!! Sapat, you must have your hands full with 3. I am hoping by the time dd turns 7 I will have mastered the skills needed to get through this-ha!
Thank you for all your responses, it really has made me feel a lot better xxx

[Eigg]

It might be worth a discussion/role play about how he would feel if others treated him the same way.

We talk a lot about winning and losing with grace. In the end no one will want to play with a bad sport.

[mamabluestar]

We have a DD who is 7.5 anx the same. We are trying to put firm boundaries in place to try and overcome it. Interesting about the testosterone in boys, I will keep an eye out for this with DS

[moveon]

So glad I found this post

[shebird]

I don't have any advice to offer except that your DS sounds just like DS2s friend. He appears to be super confident and is always talking about how amazing he is at sport and how he is in the top group for everything and what level he is working at. My DS is quite easy going but gets really annoyed by this, especially when he points out daily that he is not as clever as him. He is not saying it to be nasty as such just sort of boastful and insensitive.