“Me, Me, Me!” Kids

“Me, Me, Me!” Kids

Joey & Carla Link

May 20, 2020

The “Me! Me! Me!” epidemic is bigger than the pandemic ever will be. Parents get frustrated when they have to constantly tell their kids to share, to be kind, and so on. Kids think about what they want and they think what they want should be the priority in yours and their siblings minds.
This can be seen when:
  • Your children have to play a game they don’t want to play and they sulk, pout, and complain throughout the entire game.
  • Your kids don’t appreciate the meal you made for dinner. They demand what they want to eat and refuse to eat at all if they don’t get it.
  • One of your kids doesn’t like the movie someone else in the family chose to watch and even though it was their sibling’s turn to choose, this kid tries to talk him into watching the one he wants.
Children 3 and under don’t understand why they shouldn’t demand what they want. You get to teach them that life doesn’t work that way by being consistent in not giving in to their demands and being willing to deal with the fit that will come.
How can parents work on their kids when they are focusing on themselves?
  • 3 Good Things – From the time our kids started public elementary school, Carla would ask them on the walk home to tell her about their day. Most of what they said was always negative. So she told our kids they had to tell her 3 good things that had happened that day before they could tell her anything negative.

Our kids got into the habit of sharing 3 good things and they did so all through their school years including high school. We started asking them for 3 good things that happened after any event they went to as well. Often, after they shared the good things the bad things didn’t seem so important to them anymore.

  • Others First – Both our moms used to say, “When your friends come over and they don’t want to play what you want to play, as guests in your house they get to choose.” That is just the way it was when we were growing up.

3 questions to put others first: When our kids were being selfish in their interactions with their siblings or us, we would ask them this question: “Who are you thinking of right now?” They had to reply they were thinking of themselves. We followed that up with “Who should you be thinking of right now?” Their response would be the person they weren’t being kind to. Our next question was, “What can you do to show him you are thinking of him before yourself?” If they couldn’t come up with something they could do, they had to sit and think about it until they could. These questions backed them into a corner they could not squeeze out of.

 

At dinner each night, go around the table and have each person share one way they thought of someone else more than themselves that day. If your kids can’t come up with anything you can share something you might have noticed they did for one of their siblings. If Dad is consistent about asking each night, your kids will start to do things for others just so they will have something to share!

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this:
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.
Mark 13:30-31
Love God first then everyone else.
Where does loving yourself come in?