Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Being Mean and competitiveness

My dd6 has always been pretty competitive, but lately it's seems worse, maybe due to being out at parties, etc. I feel it more acutely that she is not behaving.
She doesn't want to share, and will often make demands for the biggest piece of whatever is being served. Further and worst of all, she will sometimes make outright mean remarks with her closest cousins, whom I suppose she thinks will tolerate this rudeness.

I have taken to explaining in detail and quietly/nicely how and why we may be competitive, why people don't like it if you say mean things, even if you don't mean them...and so on. And continue to work on praising when she IS polite.


It reminds me of when my son had difficulty making/keeping friends because he really didn't understand basics of the back and forth of a conversation; when to stop talking, etc.

Is this normal for a 6 year old girl, or is it possible this is one of many subtle variations on 'social delay' that gifted kids and kids with lds sometimes have? It seems a bit extreme to me. Maybe I am trying to interrelate too many issues and they are not so related:
competition
grumpiness
perfectionism
wanting to be better/get more attention than ANYone else
selfishness

In general? I've found, with my kids, that it helps immensely (in the general character-building sense) for them to do something they're not particularly good (read: pretty lousy) at. They get a healthy dose of being just one of the crowd (which is a lot easier at six than sixteen or twenty), plus they have the opportunity for feeling a real sense of achievement by working hard to become halfway decent at it. If it involves being part of a team, so much the better, because there are about a thousand other associated (lessons to be gained along the way.)

There's an old episode of Dinosaurs (from...maybe the early 90s) in which Baby Dinosaur's continuing phrase is "Am I in the story yet?" That's gotten to be a catchphrase here for trying to make oneself the center of attention-- a somewhat more polite and humorous warning that "you're being annoying, consequences will be coming soon if you don't knock it off RIGHT NOW".

The plus side, of course, is that if she learns this lesson well at six you'll hear a whole lot of people tell you how charming she is when she gets older!

I agree with MON. And, in my house (or anywhere I am in charge of a group of kids), the kid who clamors for the biggest piece gets the smallest piece, (or gets to choose last), the kid who is obnoxious about being first gets sent to the back of the line etc. They seem to learn pretty quickly that it is in their enlightenend self-interest to be gracious.

I'll second what MON said also And I'll add - six years old was an age that each of my kids went through some personality challenges! From what I understand about child development (and I'm on expert on this) - 6-7 years old is a time developmentally when children are starting to see themselves as independent from their parents in very real ways for the first time, so it's one of the times in their lives where they are prone to being overly emotional etc. (Kinda like a test run for puberty lol). It also coincides with a time when they are typically in the first years of full-day school, first years of having to sit in a classroom, things like that, so their world has changed and they may act out more because of that.

I think that (just for me) sometimes it helps to not assume everything that happens with my kids is due to giftedness - I think this is a very normal time of life for all children to potentially have some challenging behaviors.

Hang in there - I also found with all three of my kiddos, that the challenging behaviors of 6-7 years old were a phase. It was still important to deal with them, to teach our family values etc, but in the thick of it it seemed very difficult to get our values across to them - but in the long run, the behaviors did mellow out and my kids morphed back into reasonable human beings (until they hit puberty!).

polarbear

ps - not sure this will help, but one very simple thing that I think has helped us when our kids were acting out or behaving in ways we didn't want them to was to talk to them one-on-one and ask a *lot* of questions about what was going on with them - when they were that age in particular, sometimes the behaviors were due to something else entirely than the situation they were in when the behaviors occurred.

I'm not sure about that. I had sports inflicted on me early in life and the only thing that ended up giving to me was an enduring hatred to sports, particularly team sports. I never really got better.

The only thing that being part of a sports team taught me was that I was an unnecessary liability and of no value to the team. Also, that I really hated being part of teams.

JonLaw, you are giving me flashbacks again.

I insist that Wolf participates in at least one sport (he's not a sporty kid) but because of it he has found martial arts, a passion of his, and is fitter than most kids his age (not something common in my family). If he hated it I wouldn't force him, but doing something he has to work at is great for him.

The competition thing is a developmental phase. I just had this discussion with someone. Most kids around 6/7 years old are horrible losers and HAVE to win. Eventually they learn to be good losers and good winners, but it's a definite learning process. It's part of learning empathy and to think outside your own head.

"Team" needn't mean "sports", Jon. Lego League, band, girl scouts, the church bell-ringers' group...any of those will still require acting as a team in specific circumstances.

Since you brought up sports, though, between my four, we've had a pretty wide range of reaction. Second dd was a major jock, the sort who got watched by college scouts (here is where I insert a long cautionary tale about metaphorically shooting oneself in the foot). Third and eldest both managed to have fun and not embarrass themselves overmuch. Youngest...well...I'll never actually know how she could have done because in her one attempt at gymnastics class I discovered she had a natural talent for allowing other kids to cut in line ahead of her so she never had to actually do the activity. But hey, at least she creatively problem-solved.

this all gives me some good ideas on how to deal with her, instead of just dragging her out of an activity when she's going overboard. Just plain old asking her why she is saying some things has been a bit revealing already. I think there might be some learning to do on 'filtering your remarks'. Like her dad, she doesn't seem to realize that thanking someone for part of the thing they've given you (and not some other part) is NOT polite. So, like her dad, she's gonna have to get used to filtering A LOT.

I also noticed that if I tell her to apologize to another child, and then immediately turn away to let her do so, she is much more likely to offer a nice apology, than if I am still standing there watching her.

That is just for starters, I am sure I will discover more specific things to work on with her...

We do the same thing. It works well for us.

Participating in team sports also has worked well for DD11, who can be quite competitive. She's probably a 90th percentile athlete, so she's good but not the best, and has some room to work and improve. She's also learning that the team does better when everyone works together.

I'm going to disagree with this somewhat. I knew a few kids like this--and a few who were REALLY like this--but quite a lot who were not. I'm not sure how much gender comes into play here, but the boys did seem to be more intense about it. My own daughter has quite a lot of difficult and intense personality traits, but this is not one she possesses. She would PREFER to win, mind you, but more than that, she wants to keep playing. I have seen her intentionally lose a game so as not to aggravate a competitive friend whom she knew was likely to quit if he lost. She also does this with her little brother. (I file this one in my "Hmmm...that's not very Asperger's-ish" column.)

I only really got bad with the hypercompetitivness to the point of physical violence in high school.

So, it was more of a teenage 17/18 year old thingy for me. Scholastic competition as bloodsport.

This is why I generally avoid competition like the plague. Because of the risk I could pose to other people. It's generally only a problem when I'm sleep deprived.

My problem is that competition causes stress which causes sleep deprivation which reduces my inhibitions. And since my underlying mood is generally intense anger (because you are trying to destroy the competition) when I'm engaged in competition it's best that my inhibitions are present.

A catch-22, really.

I just wish that I could get my DD9 to *play* board games. She hates losing to the point that she would rather not play. My DS6 is competitive and dislikes losing, but at least he will play games.

I was paraphrasing developmental benchmarks. Of course not all kids are like that, just most or it wouldn't be listed in developmental lists.