I have tried looking around the internet for some idea, but I'm coming up empty. I'm worried about my son - he's almost 7. He has a hard time sometimes handling his emotions - we call it 'big emotions,' & he's pretty good about identifying when they're forming and letting me know if he's having a hard time controlling them. We work on calming techniques, reducing external stimuli, etc. I have felt like these things are in the range of developmentally normal and we have had a handle on helping him to self-regulate.

Recently, his reactions to anger/frustration/hurt seem like maybe they are beyond the range of what is developmentally appropriate. Here are a couple of examples:

His older sister didn't respond to him in the car; he threatened to throw something of hers out of the car (we all know it was an empty threat). She responded by telling him she doesn't like him making threats about her things. She mentioned that she didn't find it nice, especially since she had just loaned him her money to buy a snowcone at the event we were at. The three of us discussed strategies for him to get her attention better, as well as ways she can be more open to interaction. It felt handled to me - no big emotions, no blame, looking forward to how everyone can work to a better outcome next time. Well, when we got home, he was in a major mood, refusing to get out of the car. I was emptying the car and bringing our stuff inside to put away, listening for when he decided to come in. 5 minutes later, he finally stormed in, making a loud show of how upset he is. My daughter tried to talk to him, to no avail. He started yelling about how he is stupid and dumb, over and over (this negative self-talk has been creeping up more and more when he gets upset). Then he took the candy from a recent birthday party and all his money (some loose bills and his piggy bank) and put them on the nightstand in my daughter's room. I went to lay down with him and talk it over. He told me he NEEDED to give her those things in order to feel right. While he was talking it over, he was rhythmically tapping his fingers together against his thumbs, back and forth.

The next day, at a friend's house, he was upset at how his sister and friend were bossing him around. He came out to where I was and was doing the finger tapping again while trying to calm down.

Another time, he got so mad about an interaction with his sister that he went outside and yelled at us (repeatedly, and for about 10 minutes) to lock him outside. I refused for awhile, but he got more and more upset. I finally locked the door he was at and went about emptying the trash in the house. When I was done (5 minutes?) he was seriously upset that he hadn't been able to get inside (only at that door). He was through the anger, then, so I tried to talk it through with him. He was furious with his sister, and wanted her to feel bad/to be punished. When I mentioned that he was the one he was punishing, not her, and that he was the one who was feeling bad, he denied that, saying that SHE was the one who was punished, and SHE was the one who was locked out. I still don't get what happened there in his mind.

Relatively often (once or twice a week?), he gets upset and gets into the cycle of "I'm STUPID!", "I'm DUMB", or "I HATE MYSELF!" Sometimes, he says things like he wishes he wasn't real, or that he wishes nothing was real. I don't know what to do with that.

Mostly, I try to physically calm & comfort him, or respond to him when he's using negative self-talk by saying that I love him enough for both of us right now, or that I don't believe he's stupid or dumb. I talk a lot about how everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes it's really hard to separate our choices or actions at one point in time from who we are as people. I tell him that I make mistakes sometimes as a mommy, but I think I'm still a good mommy. And that even when he or his sister make a mistake about how they treat each other, that doesn't mean they aren't loving, or loved, or smart, or kind, or compassionate. I don't know how to move him out of this idea of absolutes - that one unkind act/statement doesn't mean someone is an UNKIND PERSON. We talk about how being a child means learning about the kind of person you want to be and how a lot of that happens through trial and error, but maybe he's too young to really get that yet.

I'm mostly worried about the self-punishing, the thought that what he did to himself was actually happening to his sister, and the general idea of him not wanting to be real. Does anyone have any insight into this? I'm not looking for diagnoses, obviously, but I'm wondering if these are red flags I need to follow up on with a professional. I don't know what's normal in general and what isn't - all I know is how my daughter was at this age; that's not a large sample size. I don't want to search for labels for my son or misidentify typical behaviors as worrisome ones, but I also don't want to ignore authentic warning signs and not get help when it's important.