His way or the highway (or at least a meltdown)

At almost 5 years old, I would've thought he'd be better about dealing with this by now. Brady comes up with a plan, and if it has to be changed or interuppted, he acts like the world is ending.

Ever since he could communicate, he's been very firm in what he wants. It used to be that a certain person had to get his drink for him, or his sandwich had to be cut a certain way. If you didn't meet his expectations (whether he had told you about them or not), he'd have a fit. It wasn't all that surprising when he was a "terrible two-year-old", but now it's getting really old. He has the words to tell us what he wants and he should have to patience to deal with things if they don't go according to plan.

His poor daddy gets the brunt of this because I know most of his little games and plans and the way he likes things done, but Daddy isn't always in the loop. Two recent examples:

First - When we open the garage door and light pours in, Brady pretends it is fire. He freezes on the stairs until the door is completely open and then has to walk around the light patches on the floor because they'll "burn" him. Major meltdown when Daddy tries to make him finish down the stairs before the door is done opening. And by meltdown, I mean pushing Daddy back up the stairs trying to hit and kick, then running back inside crying for 5 minutes before we could coax him to come back outside to the car. Daddy had NO idea what he did wrong.

Second - On the way to dinner last night, Brady decides he wants us to sit on either side of Henry, and Daddy on the other side of the table. I told him Daddy would want to sit with them, but that is not acceptable in his mind. We get to the restaurant where we're meeting Daddy and Daddy picks up Henry, sits him down in the booth and slides in next to him. Brady starts bawling. After a couple minutes, we manage to calm him down so he can tell Daddy his plan and we figure something out that's agreeable to all. He sometimes calms down fairly quickly, but I don't know how to help him not have the emotional outburst in the first place..

I'm just wondering if/when/how Brady will learn that people can't read his mind so he needs to use his words instead of crying/hitting/kicking/running away when someone does something he wasn't planning on and if/when/how he'll be able to handle a change in plans or do what other people want to do instead.

All that and ..... I really wish he'd stop being so rude to people that try to open or hold the door open for us. He's my designated doorman, but other people don't know that and they are just trying to be polite. Even Daddy forgets sometimes and he gets an earful when that happens.