Combating Selfish Behavior - Part 1
Easter was yesterday, and I wonder if some of these conversations were had at your house, too:
- “No, you can’t have any more chocolate. You’ve already had enough for one day.”
- “No, the Easter Bunny didn’t bring you anything else. Don’t you think you have enough stuff?
And for those of us with more than one child…
- “Give your sister her Easter toy back!”
Selfishness can be a real problem, and holiday’s can bring out the worst in our little angels. Attempts to let our children know they are loved and special backfire and erupt into a litany of ingratitude and begging. “More! More! More!”
I was working on another of my b5media blogs, Baldiness, and I came across a couple stories involving Victoria and Sami. These two girls recently donated their hair to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for children who have lost their hair. In writing those posts, it occurred to me that perspective is a big part of selfish behavior.
Sometimes our children get wrapped up in the minutia and lose all sense of reality. I remember as a 10 year old, being brought to tears because my Dad wouldn’t let me keep the sweatshirt with a hole in it. He insisted on giving me the otherwise identical one that wasn’t half way to becoming a rag. No one in their right mind fights for the ratty sweatshirt; only I wasn’t in my right mind at that moment.
I’m discovering that children haven’t changed since I was one. Occasionally, all perspective gets thrown out, and the entire universe is condensed into one object, event or act. It becomes our job as parents to restore perspective.
I know: Easier said than done when in the midst of a tantrum. While we may not be able to do much in the middle of a tantrum, I think we can minimize the selfish fits by teaching our children to think beyond themselves in the sane moments. The sooner we expose kids to a world beyond themselves, the better off they - and we! - will be. They need to know that there are worse things in the world than not getting some candy from the grocery store checkout lane.
In the next part, I’ll throw out a few ideas for helping our kids keep perspective.
