My daughter the pessimist

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millersatthefar

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Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my “the glass is half empty…and I didn’t like it anyway” daughter. She is 7 and my oldest daughter so I have no frame of reference for this problem. She sees everything as a personal affront and says that everyone hates her and other such nonsense. She is a talented, beautiful girl and I have been telling her so her whole life so this negativity is making me crazy!

Thanks
 
millersatthefar said:
Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my “the glass is half empty…and I didn’t like it anyway” daughter. She is 7 and my oldest daughter so I have no frame of reference for this problem. She sees everything as a personal affront and says that everyone hates her and other such nonsense. She is a talented, beautiful girl and I have been telling her so her whole life so this negativity is making me crazy!

Thanks
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Can you be more specific? Give examples?
 
My eldest tried that on me, “everyone hates me” at first I tried to talk her out of it IE giving her compliments and telling her how wonderful she is but the problem just got worse then one day I had it and when she came off with the everyone hates me stuff I just told her "ok , everyone hates you this is why you have cloths on your back, food on your plate, a roof over your head and proper medical care is because you are hated soooo much. I left it there, she just sat back with a stunned look on her face and finnaly said “wellllll mom I didn’t mean you!” I popped back at her “well I guess not everyone hates you then, huh?” That is when we got down to the real problem she was having.

I loved the “its not fair!” stuff too. I would just pop back with " you did this and this soooo you want me to give you whats fair?" funny I never did have any takers for that. The trick is to make them realize the part of the cup that is half full. I found that the best thing is not to play into self pity or self anger but to call them out on it.
 
AH! The wisdom of someone who has been there. I will give it a shot, a little reality therapy as it were.👍
 
We get “everyone hates me” from our 9 year old boy. Whenever he does that, we sing the “guess I’ll go eat worms” song. It’s our humorous way of deflecting it.

Honestly, some people are just pessimistic. I was, and until someone who meant a lot to me told me he was bothered by my complaining, I didn’t rein it in. She’s gonna have to pay the social price of her attitude and she’ll only change it when that price becomes too high. You can’t force it.

Thankfully, that guy did eventually marry me. 😃
 
Good advice from s4angel. People with that tendency will exaggerate their situation “everyone hates me” when it is really that she had a tiff with 1 or 2 friends at school. You need to help her unpack her statements so she can see that it isn’t everyone or isn’t really so awful and can be corrected. It is a skill that we all need to learn, it’s just harder for some. Humor can work to get them in a frame of mind to talk, sometimes it doesn’t help at all. But one rule we always enforced was that just because you were in a bad mood or not feeling well, was no excuse to be rude or misbehave. So don’t let her downer moods rain on everyone else’s parade. She may just need a bit of quiet time to come around.
 
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