Strategies for coping with an invasion!

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DS is 3.9 and has (anti) social skills which are coming slowly slowly. One manifestation is a really ferocious defensive streak - he goes to nursery and is fine on 'neutral' territory with sharing toys etc. If anything over-diffident. However with visiting children he is extremely prone to full and embarassing meltdown if he perceives them to be interfering with his things. Never physical aggression, but big-style histrionics and verbal unpleasantness. The stern approach tends to a) bounce and b) get the attitude entrenched, though we don't tolerate the behaviour as not fair on other kids involved.

Anyway, we have rather rashly invited an old friend and his 3 kids of 5, 3 and 6mths to stay for the weekend. DS hasn't met any of the kids, so a tall order in anyone's book.

Please can anyone offer any advice for getting through the weekend without blood on the carpet on anybody's part?

Talk to him before the visitors arrive, and explain they will want to play with some f his toys. Let him choose which toys he doesn't mind sharing, and which ones he wont want to share or play with over the weekend, and hide those toys away.

As much as possible keep the guests out of his bedroom, and in neutral territory in other areas of the house, but obviously be subtle about it or you might appear to be somewhat of a nutter.

second the idea of putting away some toys. I think part of it with dd was being in a situatin wih some loss of control. he might settle down better over a weekend than just a playdate. This was always the case with dd often felt that with a 1-2 hour play session she was just settling down and then it was time to go. If it's any comfort, dd is now 4.5 and things are much better. with shorter and longer sessions, it seemed the longer she had to think about someone coming, the worse it got, so i either arranged at last minute or didn't tell dd until just before.

Many thanks, I will try those strategies.

Interested that your DD did better with limited notice. I have tended to assume that I should prepare DS well in advance, but he certainly can and does wind himself up to the nth about all the dreadful things that are going to happen!

Agree about looking like a nutter too - am already contemplating sleeping in his room and giving visiting parents our bed, to avoid explaining why we aren't putting the visiting girls in there!

Sleeping in his room sounds like a good idea to me.

I have one of those.... we talk about visitors before they come, work out which toys are too special to share and need to be put up high in mum and dads room. We do a lot of talking in the few days before guests about how other people will be playing with his "farm" or whatever and may not play with it exactly as he would, but its OK as they WILL leave it here when they leave and it is HIS farm still.
He comes to sleep in our room as a treat , we move his bed in there and all squeeze in. Its treat as it gives him instant access to daddy in the morning.

Recently our house guests have had slightly older children than DS and he has had a blast once they get here, he actually quite likes being bossed about by older children as they can keep pretend games going for longer. Its with younger ones where the squabbles start.

gosh - thank you - merely knowing he isn't the only one out there is massively helpful.

At present he's going to take ALL his toys upstairs, hide in his bedroom and never come out and never see them ever again.

Wish me luck!