Kid Personality Q

[waverly]

DD has DH's personality.  And they type of personality I struggle with a bit.  The main thing I wonder with her, is she wants everything.  She is expressive so there is a lot of complaining and demanding.  When we cuddle in the morning and night, it is a list of all the things she wants.  No matter what she gets she will still want more, so it's not really a matter like she is deprived or something. I try to strike a balance so it is not everything she wants, but not nothing either.

Some of it might be the age, since she is 6 and that age is pretty selfish.  But I feel like a lot of it is her personality. I combated the selfishness for DS with service organizations through school and scouts.  But hers is less selfishness and more, IDK never being happy with what it is that she has.  Any tips?  She is in scouts, and I have seen her learning with that.   

Example: She wanted a certain bow and got it.  Now she wants a doll and 100 other things and lists them.  She constantly complains about friends not playing with her, but she is always playing with someone when I pick her up and never wants to go home. She is jealous of what others have even if it is silly stuff (to adults) like nail polish. 

[mommyatty]

When my kids start having a gratitude deficient, I start making everyone say what they are grateful for at dinner and during nightly cuddles. With your D, every time she makes an “I want” statement, I would make her give me an “I’m grateful” statement. If she can’t, then she needs to stop the “I wants”. So, she says “I want a new doll”. What are you grateful for? I don’t know. “Well, until you learn to be grateful for the bow you just got, and all the dolls you already have, I see no reason to get you anything else.”

Also, my kids earn big things between gift giving occasions. They can do chores to earn toward something “1 button = $1” and you need 60 buttons for an AG doll. Dusting earns 1 button, making your bed without being reminded earns a button, etc. They value the thing gas they save up for and earn a lot more than the things they are given.

[waverly]

Thanks mommyatty . They do chores and do get an allowance but she is spending most of it on the concession stand at camp. Only one more week of camp left, so thankfully spending it on junk food will be over with, and she is only allowed to take $1-2.

I will have her work on the grateful statements. Good reminder.

[covergirl82]

One thing we started doing is rephrasing a "want" to a "like". Instead of saying "I want that", we had the kids start rephrasing as "I like that." They still have some work toward getting there completely, but it's a starting point.

We are Christians, so we will also talk about how we should not be jealous of what other people have (because the Bible says we shouldn't be jealous), but be thankful for what we do have, even if it means we have just what we need. Again, this is something we continue to talk about and work on, because my kids still tend to "want" things. (We also live in an area where the vast majority of people have money for extras, us included. We also have money for extras, and we do buy them extras, but we're trying to work on reining it in.)

We'd like to do more volunteer work with the kids, but outside of things through church like packing Operation Christmas Child boxes and delivering food bags to lockers for kids to take home on the weekend (the families sign up for it, and the bags are delivered discreetly at night, so the kids don't feel embarrassed), it can be hard to find things for them to help with (as some organizations don't allow kids under a certain age to help).

Now that the kids are getting older, we're also looking for ways to replace gifts of things with gifts of experiences.

Another idea would be to let your kids know that they can earn money for wants by doing extra chores, selling toys they don't play with anymore, using their allowance money, etc.

[covergirl82]

mommyatty, I like the idea of doing the "I'm grateful for" statements as well. I'm going to start doing that with my kids.

[waverly]

covergirl82, it's like I try to address one issue and her mind is racing to 50 other things. Thanks for your suggestions. We do have an organization that the kids can volunteer at and scouts as well.

Maybe there are some books on jealousy that we have here. I can say the bible, but I would also like to have it enforced like maybe Sunday school might cover it? I am terrible with teaching religious concepts. And getting them back to Sunday school is on my list.

[traveltheworld]

My DD is like that. She always wants more things - and it could be something completely ridiculous: like if we are at a hardware store, she'd beg to buy "something", and if there's nothing appropriate, she'd want to buy nails. And she has the victim mentality - as in, everyone is mean to her. It drives DH and I crazy.

A few things we've been doing to help:

1. When she wants to buy something, we ask her to give us an explanation of why she wants to buy it and what she'll use it for. Then we talk through what she currently has that could meet the same desire.

2. When she complains/whines about something/someone, we work with her in coming up with things she can do to change the situation. We must say "you are in control of how things go!" a dozen times a day.

3. Our nightly routine includes having everyone talk about what they are grateful for that day. It took 6+ months of her saying "everything" and then pouting before she started coming up with more concrete examples.  Back when she refused to come up with anything, we tried not to get annoyed and just gave her examples of things that have gone well that day for her.  Usually that cheered her up.

4. We have a family values poster in our breakfast area which says "We are the XXXs. We are Kind, We are Respectful, We are Productive, We are Inquisitive, and We Persevere" And every Sunday morning when we have our big weekly breakfast, we go around and talk about a few things that demonstrated our family values that week. We also constantly remind her of those.

[waverly]

traveltheworld, I love that your family values are posted and talked about weekly!