Losing and competition

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I poked around a bit and didn't find a thread specific to this issue, but could use some guidance.

After talking with my son this morning to find out what had happened at school yesterday, I discovered that his meltdown was related to a flag football game in PE class. We've had only minor difficulty with PE in the past, usually having to do with DS responding to being jostled by hitting someone, but, considering everything - incidents have been rare. In this case, a kid on the other team was "trash talking" my son's team - even my son acknowledged that it was about the team and not about him, but he took it absolutely personally - as is understandable: it's a socially ambiguous thing for anyone.

My son's response was to immediately and loudly agree with how bad his team was, how much they sucked, etc., and to threaten to hit the other boy. He got sent to the bench for being a bad sport and to calm down (a good thing) He told me that the teams are never fair, he's never on the winning team, he always loses etc. etc. (if you ask him, he's never won anything in his life - which I know is not true. He immediately forgets the wins and focuses on the losses.)

I am trying to untangle this entire package of sensory/social overload one bit at a time. First, this morning, I explained that "trash talking" can be a normal part of sports, and then showed him a clip of Mohammed Ali calling Joe Frazier ugly and a gorilla - and then one that described how Joe Frazier supported Mohammed Ali when he was banned from boxing, and considered him to be a friend. I contacted the school and asked that DS be allowed to sit out as needed in gym class, and am in the process of writing an email to the PE teacher explaining the sensory/social overload that he's dealing with.

The one piece I've untangled that I don't know how to deal with is his reaction to losing. Any loss, whether it's the lottery or a footrace, is devastating for my son. He sees losing as something that reflects on who he is; this has always been the case from the time he was very small - we can't even play board games at home. A quick google showed that this is not unusual with a diagnosis of Asperger's, but so far I'm not seeing strategies to go with it.

I do realize that addressing this one is going to be a long process, but I don't really have an idea as to where to begin - we've talked about it with him, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in at all. I think some of the problem is that I need an Asperger's-friendly language template to discuss winning, losing, and competition. I could also use some help understanding the thinking mechanism behind this. Any ideas?

Boy, I wish I did have some idea! We deal with this same issue. We've done kind of similar things, talked about how even Olympic athletes make mistakes, but he's such a relentless perfectionist.

We did see some real improvement in good sportsmanship last year, I think because of work his teacher was doing with his class. Practice in complimenting others on a good job or encouraging them when they lost, not bragging too much. That teacher left though and I'm not sure exactly how his program worked.

This kind of thing is tough, because it's tangled in with several other things, including self-image, self esteem, social anxiety and emotional control. Gym class somehow manages to roll all these things up into a single wad of suck in the hell known as Jr. High school. It's bad enough that teams are usually chosen by 2 boys picking who they like best, almost always leading to the aspie kid being last, but any mistake or lapse becomes yet another reason for the boys to call him "loser" and "dork". And even if he does, say, hit a home run, they clap and cheer, but always with that edge of meanness, reminding him he's an outsider, not one of them.

"Then why does he scream and yell when he plays his video games?" A few reasons. One, he identifies himself as smart, a gamer. Losing a video game, ANY game, challenges his self perception. Irrational as it may seem, he's NOT supposed to lose there, ever. Also, emotional control is difficult for us growing up. We simply don't know how to measure or display proper emotional responses. So yes, dying to that mutant who came from behind in Fallout 3 WAS the worst thing in the world. Finally, if someone else is watching, even someone who has no idea what a mutant on the wasteland IS, he can become embarrassed by doing poorly and the dreaded "GAME OVER" comes onscreen, displaying for all in the room his failure.

Primarily, it's a self esteem issue, I'd say. A game isn't fun when you're not allowed to fail. And if you think you're a loser, you're definitely NOT allowed to fail anything, ever.