Why does our family dynamic suck so bad?

Hi, I never really thought I'd be turning to reddit for my own parenting issues, but here I am with an anonymous account because I'm too embarrassed to use anything else.Here is the situation. My wife and I have two sons 8 years and 4 years old. We live in a nice town and have a lot going for us. But there is something about our family dynamic that just seems awful at times.I think most of our issues revolve around our older son who just seems to be always negative and extremely moody. And if he's hungry (which seems to be most of the time) he can be just awful. If his little brother asks him a question, he might lash out yelling at him. When we ask/remind him to bring his plate up from dinner he might lash out at us or just mumble, "you're the worst parents ever." We try to keep our cool and tell him, "that isn't the way we talk to each in this house or how we talk to others in general. If you have something to say, say it and have a conversation, but just yelling isn't how we communicate."We've also tried more of the hard line approach by giving timeouts and taking away various bargaining chips (like screen time that he has on the weekend).Our 8 year does great in school, but he doesn't seem to be able to regulate his emotions very well.I can't tell if this is just a rough patch we are going through or if there is some underlying issuing we are failing to see. It seems that his intense mood swings have been going on for many years.I don't even know what I'm looking for by posting here. I need to wrap it up because I hear our younger son now crying because of something his older brother did (this happens like 10 times a day at least :-)Has anyone else been through something like this. Did your son/daughter come out OK in the end? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2Igk79L