Please help - I'm at the end of my tether with my son's behaviour.
My son has just turned 7. He has always been full of energy, bouncing around and full of beans. He is clever, right at the top of the class for reading and maths at school. He has the attention to sit for long periods at home (and at school obviously), reading, playing lego, playing with toys. One on one at home he is quiet and happy and polite and easily occupies himself.
Add his friends into the mix and he becomes wild. I am finding play dates awful because he just goes into crazy mode. He's rude to me and mean to his friends. These play dates often end up with physical fighting, meaness and tears and all the while my son is just so hyper that I just can't talk any sense into him. He is also very boastful which I worry is a product of me bigging up his achievements (I thought this was the right thing to do). For a long time I just avoided playdates but this is not always practical.
I don't know what to do. It's not just play dates. Simple tasks like picking him up from an after school club or fun things like parties become really stressful for me and I come home feeling full of tension and really fed up because he just is in this mode where I can't get through to him. What can I do? I feel sure I must be parenting him all wrong and this makes me so sad.
I have given up my career to stay at home to raise the children and just feel like he would have been better all along in childcare because I've messed up. His temperament is so different from my daughter's, and always has been. Help... please!! His teacher's say there is no problem from her perspective and that he is well behaved at school. It just seems to be this interaction with his peers that is the problem.