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There's 3 degrees of embarrassment: there's embarrassed, humiliated and finally "these people are going to think differently about me now." I experienced the last one tonight at a friend's home. When it was time to leave, my oldest child thought it meant he got to go home with a friend he was there playing with, however, he was not set to go play there next, I was planning on picking up some dinner and going straight home. Well, before I could even blink my son was on attack mode. Oh, it wasn't a tantrum, that I could handle, this was an ANGER STORM. My 6 year old was hitting, kicking, destroying, just being very vicious to me. I was kind of in shock and trying to play it off in front of my friends , trying not to show how mortified and disturbed I was by my son's behavior. I mean, we'd been dealing with his hitting ect. for a long time now and he hadn't acted out like this (especially with everything combined) like that in recent memory. I would have much preferred whining or even crying about that we had to leave. But he was literally threatening me and even throwing things at my poor friend who was trying to reason with him. The really sad thing is that he probably could have played at his friend's house again if he just would have asked instead of immediately going crazy on me. I don't know what my friends' thought about my rather pathetic attempt to stop his behavior. My efforts felt like putting a tiny band-aid on an arm stump gushing blood. I was so disappointed in him and me by the time I got us out of there, it was all I could do not to burst into tears in front of the Little Caesar's pizza guy. I told my son, in a calm manner I'm proud to say, how disappointed I was in his behavior when we got home. I find it easier to communicate when we are both calmed down, but honestly, in the heat of the moment, I don't know what to do about my son when he's acting like that, even when it happens at home. Even looking back tonight, an hour or two later, I don't know what I could have done different. I've tried taking away video games, tv, computer time, we've done timeouts, we've persuaded, loved, spanked, all different sides of the spectrum. Maybe we just haven't been consistent long enough with one method. Either way, there's about 15 min. of my life I wish I could erase today...