3. A six year old kid with an extremely pessimistic world view

[franceslievens]

Little Pessimist had to give up 5 minutes of recess for me yesterday. She had decided it was a good day to not play by the rules, and answered she didn't hear when I told her three times to close her book and pay attention. That of course wasn't the only incident. There was the shouting of "Me! Me! Me!" to answer a question, and when I told her off – threatening to revoke her recess-rights – she kept clicking her fingers at me, like I were her dog. Once you threaten, you do what you said, and the little nitwit ended up standing aside on the playground. In fact she managed to turn her 5 minutes into ten, because she wouldn't move, and I had to gently push her towards the playground. Maybe she thought I'd go away if she wouldn't budge?
Six years old she is. I love working with these tiny tots. They are sweet, adorable and generaly love everything they do in class, as long as it's fun and they enjoy themselves. I don't like working with Little Pessimist, though. She feels every wrong thing is directed at her personaly: A kid pushing her by accident hates her, a teacher letting other kids answer a question favores the others over her. She needs to be the favorite and the best, or she isn't pleased with herself. When she isn't pleased with herself, she goes into an incredible sulk. I don't think I've ever seen her work in my class without sulking or whining once during the fifty minutes I teach her.
The solution for this behaviour is indeed simple: a constant flow of positive feedback towards her. "You're doing great, Little Pessimist!" "Ooh, that's a nice drawing you made there!" "That's sweet of you to help her, LP." Thing is that my Little Pessimist isn't always convinced by positive feedback, because she percieves the feedback others get as better. She isn't convinced by being "as good as". She wants to be better than them. She wants to be the best and the favorite. The easy answer out is telling her off for that behaviour, which actualy strengthens her bad behaviour. She needs to learn that I don't need her to be the best or my favourite. I need her to be good. How do you teach a six year old pessimist to look at her own achievements and not what the others have done?

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Some kids (and adults) have a weird perception of the world around them and thus also of themselves. Sounds like your Little Pessimist might be suffering from a severe case of the phenomenon combined with the desire for lots and lots of attention.

Dealing with that kind of thing is extremely difficult, especially because whether you give her positive or negative feedback, it's both attention and still not ever enough.

Is there a way you can make her change perspective? To make her realize that the world doesn't revolve around her?

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

While I was writing this down I realised the problem we (her form teacher tells me comparable things about her) have with her, is exactly what you describe, and I do not know a way out. Her friends are even getting annoyed with it. LP has two friends she had since kindergarten, but those two sometimes let her down to go play by themselves because she's whining at them.

Thing is she will always end up with bad behaviour and getting negative attention, because I don't want to give her positive attention all the time. the negative attention she will always get, because otherwise she'd disrupt the class even more. I do have the other kids on my hand. They disaprove of negative behaviour as well. It becomes difficult when they think the bad behaviour is funny.

Ah well, I'll try and do some things like "How do you think this person feels?" and "How do you feel?" etc. It's a start in understanding other people see and feel other things and think different things are important.