Selfish Selfish
I want my kids to be selfless, not selfish. It is so hard to teach, especially when they are so young. What was especially hard is that my 1 year old son L likes the same things now as my 5 year old son C.
One night at dinner a few weeks ago, we were all sitting at the kitchen. C had 3 different toys with him and L wanted one. Instead of sharing one of the toys, C said no. Now he has every right to say no, but I explained to him that it would be a better choice to share one of the toys since his very little brother wanted one and I never usually let them have any toys at the table anyways when they are eating. It’s nice to have lots of toys and it’s good to share.
L started to scream and cry and C still did not want to share. It got really bad, so I grabbed one of the toys and shared with L. C obviously was not happy and I had to take all the toys away since the rule is that we don’t have toys during dinner anyways. This ended up being a blowup because everyone was hungry and we had to simmer down.
I explained to C later at night that I was sorry for snatching the toy from him. I wanted him to also recognize that it is easy to share when you have a lot. It’s honestly the easier way to share when you have too much of something. He said he understood and at least we ended the day in a positive way.
The next night at dinner, the same scenario presented itself again. C had too many toys and L wanted one. I was observing to see if things would change and unfortunately, they did not. There wasn’t a blowup, but I ended up letting the situation play out. Then dinner came out and I took the toys away.
It was fine to have a blowup and it was fine to not learn the lesson quickly. Learning is not necessarily linear and progress follows the same path. We can’t see progress when zoomed in day by day, but when you zoom out, progress often has the right trend line even if there are regressions or plateaus. I just need to remind myself that selfish selfish back to back doesn’t mean it will always stay that way. Kids learn if we teach them in the specific ways they need to hear the lessons.
