I don't want my child to feel ashamed of his desires, even if they are unreasonable.
That's really important, and a hard lesson to teach. How do you teach a child to express desires in such a way that you can be sympathetic and not feel like he is whining or being obnoxious about it?
Parenting the petal-wayrdhdsnippetSeptember 10 2008, 16:00:49 UTC
So far my strategy has been to acknowledge the validity of his desire without minimizing it, but also without necessarily giving in to it. "Wow, that IS a really neat thing, you're right!".
It's amazing how often just acknowledging is all a child wants or needs - sometimes as adults we assume that a kid is going to demand something and we try to preempt it. If I rush into, "We can't buy/have/do that", I may well be causing a problem that wouldn't have been there had I taken a more relaxed approach. It may have never occurred to him that we would bring something home, so why borrow trouble?
I also find that comforting and acknowledging the disappointment or anger a child might have at not getting their way helps a lot too. "You're very sad/angry, I understand that." That whole explaining a child's emotions to them (and sometimes you do get it wrong) is really awkward in the beginning, and to someone without kids of the right age I know it looks ridiculous and overindulgent a lot of the time, but it really does work
( ... )
"I don't want my child to feel ashamed of his desires, even if they are unreasonable."
I understand how difficult it is to find this balance. With Niece no longer in my direct care it is more difficult to have this influence on her. She also now has 9 adults who are very close to her - all who buy her things. I've put much emphasis recently on sharing "experiences" with her, rather than things. We went for a fancy High Tea, Princess style, at a local Chateau, we made it a project to visit a different park every day, we went swimming in two different pools - stuff like that.
Now that she's older I'm encouraging her to make her own value decisions. She can buy a book at the level she is reading at, for $5. By handing her $5 as a limit, she will spend hours making a judgement between 1 candy and one book, or 3 arcade games, or 4 vending machine toys, or a bouncy ball vs book, and so on. (She also owns more than 200 books at her reading level, so I'm not worried about her not reading either)
I share much of these feelings. My kids are older and pretty darned articulate about their desires (to which we say no with almost no trace of guilt now). But I also had an overly generous grandfather and parents who resented that and for which I paid a certain kind of price.
ON the rubix cube subject. Can you solve the thing? I can't. Kiddo got one that was just 2x2 on each side and I thought "oh good, I will be able to solve that", but no. Turns out, I'm not even that bright. I don't think they can make it any simpler....
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Awww! That's precious!
I don't want my child to feel ashamed of his desires, even if they are unreasonable.
That's really important, and a hard lesson to teach. How do you teach a child to express desires in such a way that you can be sympathetic and not feel like he is whining or being obnoxious about it?
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It's amazing how often just acknowledging is all a child wants or needs - sometimes as adults we assume that a kid is going to demand something and we try to preempt it. If I rush into, "We can't buy/have/do that", I may well be causing a problem that wouldn't have been there had I taken a more relaxed approach. It may have never occurred to him that we would bring something home, so why borrow trouble?
I also find that comforting and acknowledging the disappointment or anger a child might have at not getting their way helps a lot too. "You're very sad/angry, I understand that." That whole explaining a child's emotions to them (and sometimes you do get it wrong) is really awkward in the beginning, and to someone without kids of the right age I know it looks ridiculous and overindulgent a lot of the time, but it really does work ( ... )
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I understand how difficult it is to find this balance. With Niece no longer in my direct care it is more difficult to have this influence on her. She also now has 9 adults who are very close to her - all who buy her things. I've put much emphasis recently on sharing "experiences" with her, rather than things. We went for a fancy High Tea, Princess style, at a local Chateau, we made it a project to visit a different park every day, we went swimming in two different pools - stuff like that.
Now that she's older I'm encouraging her to make her own value decisions. She can buy a book at the level she is reading at, for $5. By handing her $5 as a limit, she will spend hours making a judgement between 1 candy and one book, or 3 arcade games, or 4 vending machine toys, or a bouncy ball vs book, and so on. (She also owns more than 200 books at her reading level, so I'm not worried about her not reading either)
Anyway... it's a tough balance to
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Actually I don't think making it smaller makes it that much easier unless you're just looking to hit it by chance.
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