Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [89]
Selfishness
Kids, by their nature, are selfish, having little “social interest” in anyone else. We parents ought to take a clue from the first thing they say when they’re born: “Waah!” All they care about is themselves—and whether they’re warm,cuddled, and fed. Life is truly “all about me.” The human species is interesting and different from most other species because it takes a while for a young child to become fully functional (versus this happening much faster in the animal community). For the first year, the child doesn’t usually talk, feed herself, etc. She is completely dependent on Mommy (Dad doesn’t quite have the body parts needed).
When the child begins to get mobile is an important time for training, especially in the area of sharing (more on that in “Sharing”). You see blatant examples of kids’ selfish natures all the time. When this happens, say to the child, “That was a selfish thing to do. Did you mean to be selfish?”
Many times the child will say, “No.”
“Can you think of a better way to handle the situation?” you ask. “Why don’t you call your friend back now and suggest something different?”
In this situation, your responsibility is to be the shepherd guiding the sheep. Like a good shepherd, you sometimes have to guide them gently in the right direction with your staff (even when you feel like whacking them over the head).
Every parent has a responsibility to guide their child toward selfless behavior and thinking of others.
In my seminars, I ask parents, “Why do we stop at stoplights?”
“Because it’s the law, and you don’t want to get a ticket,” they usually say.
“The best answer,” I say, “is that we stop so we don’t hurt someone else.”
Note the difference between the answers—and the fact that the unselfish answer isn’t the first one that came up. All of us are selfish. We live in a self-driven society. There’s even a magazine called Self.
When you teach a child not to be selfish, you’re actually teaching him to be antisocietal, to be unlike everyone else. But why do you want your child to be like everyone else anyway?
Learning to be selfless is an important trait for a healthy child. We’ve worked hard at instilling that in our children. From age 10 on, Lauren has taken the time to write to the child we sponsor in El Salvador. It’s good for her to understand and see that the majority of the world has far less than she does. We also deliver groceries during the holiday to needy families.
Modeling giving as a family and as an individual to those who are less fortunate than you is very important. Friends of ours volunteer on Saturday mornings in a soup kitchen. Their teenage children go with them. Funny thing is, before they started serving in the soup kitchen, those teenagers were always bugging their parents about getting another car so they wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced when their parents’ car wasn’t available. After 3 weeks in the soup kitchen, the request wasn’t mentioned again.
When your children show selfishness, they need a little dose of reality, like the teenagers who served in the soup kitchen. Or like the “only child,” whose mom decided she wasn’t going to share her treat with her child since her child had refused to share her treat with a neighborhood child earlier that day.
Teaching selflessness pays off down the line. I’ve always seen that character trait in our fourthborn, Hannah. Ask anyone who knows her, and they’d say selflessness is the way she lives her life. Last winter, one of Hannah’s classmates needed a winter coat and didn’t have money for it. Hannah, who heard of the need, just quietly bought the young woman a coat and gave it to her.
Trust me, it’s not because her father is a well-known psychologist. It has everything to do with how Hannah was reared—how her