So we've always worked really hard to help Andrei feel confident about himself. He's got some pretty serious scars (emotional, not physical) from his first few years among which is a serious abandonment complex. This has done some interesting things to the way he behaves socially and long story short, he has a constant need for outside praise in order to function. If you give him even the slightest bit of criticism he completely shuts down. We're talking full-on epic tantrum for even the slightest bit of corrective instruction. It's frustrating, but we've learned to cope as a family and in the last couple of years I've even been able to teach him things, which used to refuse 99 times out of 100 because he can't handle the concept that there's something he might not already know. Now that he's older and gaining independence we're having to revisit a lot of these issues that I thought had been put to rest.
The biggest problem we have is that he cannot play with other children without being in complete control of the situation. Unless he is able to boss all the other kids around and manipulate the situation so that he can be the supreme winner of the universe he throws a fit and storms off. Obviously this is starting to draw some negative criticism from the other kids in the neighborhood and today he came in bawling because two boys had ganged up on him and called him stupid when he declared his unsurpassed supremacy on the skateboard in front of the neighborhood gang (which admittedly he's pretty good at considering he just got it Saturday, but c'mon- best in the world? Not likely).
So I'm torn between protecting my kid and letting the bigger kids teach him a less about always having to be in control. What should I do? I've tried talking to him about fair play and about his control issues, but it totally falls on dead ears because he usually tunes out any sort of instruction that I give him. Do any of you all have kids with these kind of control issues? How do you teach a little boy with MAJOR self esteem issues that it's ok to lose?
2 comments:
I wish I had a simple solution for you but you may find this food for thought: My mother-in-law is huge into home-schooling and learning about learning and children and such. She has told me that children can't "handle" losing until they're 8 years old. I find my kids always throwing fits when they don't "win." There's no way to take them out of win/lose situations till they're eight though, so... there you go :)
My first thought was to play board games or maybe even video games that require 2 people. Let him lose once in awhile. Play with different combinations of people so that adults can lose also and maybe he can see that it's okay? or maybe he'll just end up actually being the supreme bestest person in the world! Who knows? Also, he's still pretty young. That's something that people just learn as they grow & mature.
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