Author: Help Please!!
Date: 05-02-12 11:12
Hello everyone,
I am new to this forum but not new to the gifted scene. My daughter is 7 and was assessed at 4 as being in the 99.99+ %tile. She has always been extremely smart and done everything very early. She is the eldest of 4 girls, all whom are gifted too but as we all know everyone has different strengths and not all are the same. I have always made individual time for each child as I can understand how hard it is to have to share your parents after growing up in a big family.
My daughter is across the board, it seems everything she picks up she masters, although she has some difficulties with physical things. The problems that we are facing lately as a family is that she *thinks* she is better than EVERYONE at everything and is all in all pretty selfish. This is despite our best parenting efforts her whole life instilling kindness and setting good examples, it seems that this isnt something she has 'got'. She CAN be kind, she CAN be thoughtful, but not very often. It seems to be getting worse, it is affecting her siblings who all think that they are dumb because that is what she tells them, or she tells them that she can do it better. This is behaviour we jump on pretty quickly but I am not her shadow and of course she can say these things when noone is around eg when playing outside etc. She also has a need to always be first and always win at games, we mix it up and with games sometimes she does get the first turn and others she doesnt, we have always done this to be fair (with 4 children fairness and kindness are big values we enforce alot), she gets very upset, throws the game, packs a sulky when she loses the game, but extremely cocky when winning, it turns out terribly if she is winning most of the game and then one magical stroke of luck puts one of her sisters in the lead LOL.
We are also having an issue, my eldest two are close in age and have similar friends. I have always thought it is important for them to have their own friends and allowed them to do that but also that its ok to have friends that are both of theirs. They have this one friend who is so lovely and wants to be both their friend, she comes over and wants to play with both of them but as she was miss 7's friend first she has 'claimed' her and packs a sad if the friend plays with her younger sister (who is only slightly younger) this sparks an argument infront of said friend about whos friend she is, making the friend feel uncomfortable. It makes me feel terrible, I try really hard to sort out the quarrel, talk about it with my daughter but nothing has worked. I really need to knock this on the head, friends are not possessions and they have feelings and choices they can make too, if they chose to play with both girls, why can't they all play together??
Please help me, I am sure many of you have been through similar things with your children. I feel like these behaviours are becoming more obvious and frequent as she is getting older.
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