Talking to a 4 year old about bossiness

[DecapitatedLegoman]

The thread about the "proper little madam" got me thinking. DS is a confident wee boy and talks to anyone and everyone. I think lots of that is because we live in a small town and there's a real community thing going on, so everyone talks to him and he's very uninhibited even with strangers. However, this translates to being bossy, with adults and children alike. He's always telling off his friends for not holding hands near the road or similar, things that their parents might have different rules about.

So I think maybe I need to have a talk with him about this, but I have a knack of being verbose and crap at getting my point across, and I don't want to stifle his outgoing nature either. Any suggestions?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

My DS is a bit of a sergeant-major as well :) The way I've tackled it is to tell him that it is 'not his job' to tell people how to do things. With children, it's the teacher's job, their parent's job, Akela's job or whoever is supervising them. With grown-ups, they can look after themselves and it's not OK for children to tell them what to do.

[DecapitatedLegoman]

Thanks :). I do say to him "X's mummy is here to tell X what to do, so you don't have to" but it hasn't seemed to sink in. I shall labour it a bit more next time

[Sleepglorioussleep]

Dd is like that and I do the "whose job is it to..?" thing too. She does like to lead games too so at the moment we're working on giving her the idea that good friends listen to each other's ideas. Slowly, slowly, might start to work! If you do the work now, when their friends are very forgiving, it might save trouble later!

[DecapitatedLegoman]

Thanks Sleep. You are right, I need to tackle it now before he pisses off all of his pals!

[ChippingIn]

What Cog & Sleep have said. But don't worry too much, 98% of them are like this