DS (8) is lovely most of the time - cuddly, affectionate, fun. But when something upsets him - usually though not always his older sisters being mean - he flies off the handle.
His rages are awful - he hits people, has broken stuff by hitting it in anger and tonight, when he was still hungry after dinner, and dh gave him a piece of his (hot) pizza, threw the pizza right in dh's face so it literally hit him on the face, because he was angry that dh had separated him and his sister who were fighting and was making them go to separate rooms. Dh was nearly in tears; we decided that dh would not take him out for a special day out tomorrow that had been planned; we were going to cancel a sleepover tomorrow night but that would have meant letting down his friend, who had done nothing wrong. He is asleep now but has still not said sorry or shown any contrition. He is already banned from tv and computers (the only punishments he seems to care about) at the moment for shouting and hitting.
I'm really worried about this behaviour. He does get lots of 1-1 time and positive praise when he is behaving well (which is most of the time). But he seems utterly unable (or unwilling - he never does this at school, so presumably he can control it when he wants) to change.
Very sad. I think part of the problem is that dh usually does not discipline him much - he has let him get away with rudeness to me and not backed me up at all. I think it shocked dh because it was so rude but also directed at him. I think dh identifies with him too much and thinks he will suffer if disciplined - I think ds needs to learn about appropriate limits for his own sake as much as for ours as outside the home this would be assault/criminal damage - he needs to learn to control the temper. I don't want to make ds feel any worse if there are valid reasons he is stressed or sad. But he can't take it out on others in this way either.
How do I get him to control/stop this behaviour? Does he/do we need extra help?