Our friend’s daughter slept over last night. She’s four, just a few months younger than my son. I also have a two yo daughter. She’s a good kid smart but rather more physical and more assertive than kids. Or at least moreso than my son. anyway, she’s slept over before and the kids have a good time. This morning after I had gone to work, this little girl said to my wife “Our house is bigger than your and we have more stuff.” Which is actually the case. Our friends have a newer bigger house on a much larger piece of property. She also has pointed out to my son, who is rather small for his age, that she is taller and has bigger feet than him. Again, quite true.
My wife, being the fantastic person that she is, merely said, “yes you do” about that house and also agreed that with her being bigger than our son. My question is, what alternative answers are there to such commenets from a 4yo? Surely a 4yo is not bragging, and our friends are certainly not those kinds of people.
Children at that age are in the me generation 100%. Al Franken’s SNL bits from the 80’s are a perfect representation of the ego of a 4 year old.
But also, at that age, it’s a bit early to begin trying to temper it, or correct for it. However, you can try and get them to start thinking about the emotional state of others, even if they forget to have the highest regard for it.
In other words, she won’t know that those kinds of statements may hurt someone else unless you tell her.
I think your wife is on the right track. Kids at age 4 (and up through almost-6, which is as far as I have direct experience) are still learning to describe the world, and part of that is learning comparatives. There’s a pretty low chance that the girl is trying to make anyone feel bad, or herself feel better, by making those statements. Not reacting to the (perceived, for an adult) emotional content of the statement is the best way (IMO) to defuse the potential issue.
I’ve done the same thing myself. It’s pretty easy when it’s comments about your house or your stuff. It’s a little harder when it’s about skin color – our son is South Korean, while **Dangerosa ** and I (and his sister) are very North American Caucasian.
I wouldn’t try to tell her that those kind of statements could hurt someone’s feelings unless you have a strong relationship with her and her parents – that’s pretty clearly a parenting activity, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it for someone else’s kid unless I knew the parents were okay with it (or it was egregious or intended to cause hurt, in which case the gloves come off).
My two nieces (the ones old enough to have mastered stringing sentences together) are constantly competing in every way. every thing they get you hear “mine is bigger than yours” or “Mine cost more” or “I got further than you” It irritates me but I remind myself it’s just what children are like.
Whether the girl was bragging or just stating facts, your wife did the right thing.
Getting upset at the child would only reinforce the behavior as something that gets attention, and would probably shock the girl if she felt she were only stating facts. If she were bragging, she doesn’t need extra attention for that, either.
If she keeps it up, I’d mention it to the parents a la Amusing Anecdote style: “Guess what little Courtney said! Ha ha!” This will usually cause conscientious parents to become mortified. The other sort won’t care anyway.
If it bothers your son, and he brings that up, I’d discuss it after the little girl goes home. Something along the lines of, “well, she probably didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, did she? No, that wasn’t the nicest thing to say” should probably suffice.
Mr Blue Sky, that is one evil evil thing to say to a child!
Got any more?
The real reason I ask for other opinions is for validation that my wife really is a super mom and also because I have no idea what I would have said if I had been there instead. These particular friends, I might have been a little defensive. Somehow the fact the they do have more money than we do gives me just a twinge of envy when there wouldn’t be if it were someone else.
I’m certainly no fount of knowledge, but I have been in situations identical to this one.
How about just asking some simple questions? This is a four-year-old, after all. And they usually say things because they want to talk…
“Do you think your house is bigger? In what ways? What’s the biggest room in your house?”
Or
“How did you get so tall? Do you eat special ‘tall girl’ food? I’ve been feeding SonofDaddy hamster food…do you think that’s right?”
Of course, little kids like a good joke as well as the next person…
Your wife is a super mom. And she did precisely the right thing. Didn’t make a big deal out of it, treated it as a factual statement, and moved along. At that point, calling attention to it would just have made a nasty situation.
And yes, kids are competitive.
She wasn’t bragging, or beeing snooty - she was just providing you with valuable information you might not have had access to!
Follow her closely: this one could be a valuable new source of knowlege. Why, tomorrow she might tell you she has new shoes (they’re green!) or that she had meatballs for lunch. The possibilities are endless!
There’s nothing wrong with what the kid said. Kids like to state facts. It gives them a feeling of confidence, which is what we want our kids to have. My neice heard my sister say “fuck” one day. Then my neice chimes in, “She said fuck!” I told her that yes, she did, but little girls shouldn’t say it. Then she said, “But she SAID it. She said Fuck! Did you hear her? She DID! She said FUCK! I heard her say FUCK!”
The issue of cussing in front of kids notwithstanding (Kalhoun walks to the “guilty” line and hangs her head in shame), all she was doing was affirming what she had heard.
I think when a kid is around five or so you can begin to have discussions about discretion and bragging and so on.
My kid is almost 4 and makes comparisons all the time. She talks about things “matching” a lot.
“He matches like Daddy” means “he looks like Daddy.”
The other night we were in Wal Mart and we saw this adorable little guy, maybe 2 or 3 years old and he had that cute little chubby look to him. My daughter, who had seen the Goonies recently, informed us “he matches like Chunk.”
“Our house is bigger than your and we have more stuff.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have monsters under all the beds”
Seriously, I don’t think there’s much you can do other than casually respond in the way your wife did. Anything else could land you in a sticky spot when it gets misreported back to the parents.
