Okay don't get me wrong, I love my 3 sons so much BUT my two eldest are quite sooky and bratty. My 7 year old was even crying at his best friends birthday today because a friend wanted to join in and play with him and his best friend. They are 7 and 8. They are both so kind, with hearts of gold for the most part but the extreme crying over everything is getting a bit much. Would love some suggestions on ways I can help them?
Just to note, I'm all for my sons showing emotions, its just the crying over silly things I'm concerned about
Edited to add, I have shown them empathy through out this time and I have constantly shown and told them how much they are loved and mean the world to us. I dont get frustrated at them by any means.
11 Replies
Sounds like you have a couple of highly sensitive people on your hands. If they are anxious and upset over "small" things (remember kids aren't born with the sense of perspective that we have developed over our lives, so things that seem small are a really big deal in their little worlds). You need to have a bit of empathy for them and make sure their needs are met. Over time a lot of HSP learn to mask these emotions and it manifests as other behaviours or inappropriate coping mechanisms. They could probably do with some resilience coaching and therapy
Is this not pandering to them? In the above situation OPs child was actually being mean. The other child would have felt really bad and rejected and his best friend would have felt awkward. I think it's completely OK to explain to kids how their behaviour makes other people feel and to think of others feelings. It's OK to be sensitive but you also have to learn there's a time and place for it, your best mates birthday party isn't about your feelings.
Or did the child have an expectation of how the event was going to be, and needed help adjusting to the change? Not encouraging excluding the child.
It's not pandering if you only seek to find the reason behind the behaviour, rather than punishing the behaviour.
Just went through the same with mine. Shake them up and let them know things now are not good and nor how they should be. We dont cry when we dont get what we want. We dont cry over minor things. Thats what bratty sooky kids do, and we do not. We are resilient, we are kind, we can sah oh well, too bad and handle it.
Be strict and swift on the sooking and reward them when they handle things, celebrate good days, parties where noone sooks, or at least handle our disappointment and bounce back, dont make it into a tantrum, watch how quickly things can change.
Thank you so much for the response, I will maybe try this approach
Please don't call kids horrible names like sooky or bratty. You're teaching your kids it's ok to call people names.
No those are behaviours. Its a way you can act. Do not call them brats or sooks. You can definitely tell them what behaviour is sooky or bratty and not ok. And celebrate when you all have a great time because everyone behaved well.
They are not behaviours. I've never heard a professional therapist or teacher use those words. Ask them & guarantee they'd respond with a horrified no. It's still a label that kids will use to identify behaviour & call other kids sooks.
As a mother with an SEN child who struggles with emotional regulation & having been through the therapy & psych rounds for several years, I've learned a lot about the effects of negative terminology & how we approach things. I'm quite passionate because my DS8 can't help it. He's not mollycoddled or pandered to. He works incredibly hard at changing it & uses strategies beyond his years. One child calling his behaviour sooky or bratty when he's unable to stop being upset will set him back months & destroy the confidence he's built up. I do know. My younger child's prep teacher (who was DS's teacher,) often asks me to support other parents of SEN or resilience problem classmates.
I'm not trying to be difficult or question your approach. I'm just pleading for people to please not use this terminology as kids DO learn to label, repeat & put into practice what we teach them & it can have long term effects. If anyone's child has called mine that, I've ensured the school to take swift action.
The difference is yours is unable to regulate. Just as not all kids need the therapy and explicit strategy teaching yours do, some kids are just being bratty and selfish and can quite quickly turn it around if it isnt coddled and theyre rewarded instead for showing other traits. Nowhere did I say crying because of being overwhelmed is acting bratty. Thats quite a different thing and it looks quite different too.
I might be off the mark in your situation but from my experience in childcare and just from my observations of kids I know - the sooky/bratty (to use your words) kids are often that way because they're mollycoddled and have every show of emotion over indulged.
As a result they lack resilience, problem solving skills and healthy coping mechanisms. So every time something doesn't go the way they wanted, or they're taken by surprise by an unexpected situation or when some kind of problem arises they cry or whine because they're overwhelmed and don't know how to deal with such scenarios in another way.
My advice would be to reflect on your own behavior. For example, how you react to stress, how you react to their tears, the kind of language you use (ie, is it negative and wallowing in self pitty or is it positive and encouraging), what sort of behaviour you're modeling, what you're teaching them about other people's feelings etc.
If after a good while of taking the above into consideration and putting the applicable into practice (or if you already do to no avail), then it may be worth getting a referral to a child psychologist because they may need some specialised help with their emotional regulation.
I'm the poster, and I appreciate the response. I think I do have a tendency to helicopter them however I also do try to tell them that sometimes things happen in life that aren't what we want but we need to bounce back. I do think its something more. I have taken various approaches including looking at how I parent and ways I can improve but I tend to think it could be more as well 😔