DS is always making up arbitrary rules about things and if they're not followed, it's SUCH a huge deal for him. He's always ending up throwing massive strops about it and I just can't get him to see that it's not that important.
For example, the other day he asked me to do a jigsaw with him. I said okay and sat down to do it with him. Every piece I tried to put in he would shout that it was the wrong piece, rip the piece out and throw it away, which was then impractical (aside from the possibility it might get lost) because it then meant that the connecting piece for the next one he wanted me to do was missing and so I couldn't put it in. After about three pieces being rejected I got fed up and told him his rules were too complicated and if he wanted to play with those rules, he'd have to do it on his own. Cue huge tears "No mummy come back do it with me pleeeeease" but flat out refusal to drop the "rules". He ended up getting silly and wrecking the jigsaw so I put it away completely which really upset him, but it wasn't working out and I didn't want him to wreck his new toy.
And then there's the complicated rules about walking around the house - I have to go first because he's scared, another time he has to go first down the stairs or whatever, but I haven't telepathically known this so I've already started walking down the stairs. He screams for me to wait for him, so I calmly say "Okay DS I'll wait, but you don't need to shout, just ask nicely." He then asks nicely for me to come back down the hall and wait on one particular spot of carpet until he's ready. I refuse and say I'll wait where I am as there's plenty of space for him to pass me and no reason for me to come back. Cue huge screaming crying end of the world tantrum. Also if I'm already halfway down the stairs or something, I'm not going to come back upstairs and wait for him to pass me just so he can go first. It's not safe for me to wait on the stairs, as they're narrow. But he gets so ridiculously upset it's like his whole world is caving in.
We bought a new jigsaw today and I suggested we did it, he said yeah, really enthusiastically, so I got the bag from the kitchen. He said "I'll go and get it!" and I said "No it's okay, I've already brought it in," and he refused to do it until I let him put it back in the bag, put it back in the kitchen and brought it through himself. I thought this was ridiculous and tried reasoning with him about why he needed to do it and all he could come up with was "because we can't play it if you get the bag, we can only play if if I get the bag, because it's mine" I was trying to calm him down and show him that it didn't matter but he was utterly distraught to the point that I thought oh, FFS, does it matter that much, let him take the bag back into the kitchen and bring it back through if it matters that much to him. At which point he decided it didn't matter, but he did have to make up another rule to make up for this which was that I wasn't allowed to put the first piece in since I'd carried the bag. And then we had a very lengthy discussion about how to do the jigsaw, whether to separate out the pieces or not, and how (colour or edge/middle) which involved a lot of managing on my part as he would go off on an impossibly complicated spiel of rules which is too hard for anybody else to remember. It was okay in the end and we had a nice time building the jigsaw, but it was hard work to manage that and all I could think was what a nightmare it would be if he had a sibling because his rules are so rigid and complicated and he gets so upset if someone breaks them.
(Why all my examples involve jigsaws I don't know apart from that he likes them - it happens with loads of other things too)
I was just wondering if it's normal, and how I can help him relax about things and not be so uptight?