Miserable and sulky 7 year old

[4pmwinetimebebeh]

Our 7 year old DD is going through a phase where she is just miserable all the time. Something small will set her off (today we were singing in the car on the way it a walk and she got the words to a song wrong) and she will sulk, be tearful and in a bad mood for hours.

Every day at school she says she’s had a terrible day because she’s had one small argument with someone. She’s doing great at school, loves it and has lots of friends but they have normal child frictions about things.
She has a lovely life- she wants for nothing, we try not to spoil her but she has everything she needs.

She will happily laugh and play with her friends and sister and is fine when we are doing things eg going swimming, doing an activity. But if it’s something she doesn’t want to do (like a walk or a trip to B&Q or something) she will sulk and whinge and basically ruin it for us all.

Anyone experienced similar? Please say they grow out of it! And any tips to manage!

Sorry to add- we have sat down with her so many times to explore if there’s something underlying her feeling sad- bullying/friendship issues etc. she seems to have quite low self esteem always saying we love her sister more etc (we never show preference).

She sounds like she could do with a bit of one to one time doing something nice so all the attention is on her. She's heading towards tween age which can be quite a difficult time especially for girls IMO. How is doing academically at school? Is her sister more confident/cleverer/more popular or anything else that might be make her feel not as good?

I would do behaviour points and a rewards chart for when you are going out. It will help her to understand that she gets rewarded for supporting activities that she doesn’t always like doing.

@Spring025 i agree im going to do that next weekend. Academically she’s great- she’s a natural pessimist and her sister is more happy go lucky so i think she’s envious of that sometimes. She’s gets frustrated that she feels sad but doesn’t know why. As her sister is younger she’s always colouring things in or doing shows for us so gets lots of praise- I do always try and match that with DD but she’s not as in our face as the younger one!

I could do- I feel like she’s a bit old for this now but maybe I’m being silly.

My DD is the same. Never seems to be happy which upsets me as she has a lovely life I could have only dreamt of. I suspect it is a hormone thing and just a bit of a downbeat personality.

All behaviour in kids is communication. She may not know what is upsetting her. It’ll come out in the end.

How does she know she got the words wrong? Did somebody tell her and suck the joy out of a lovely moment?

Not at all!

Would a gratitude diary help, making her say three things that have been really good about today. You could do the same, and help her to see that a lovely car to go out in that has a radio, is a thing to be grateful for
You can write them in a lovely special notebook for her as writing g herself could take ages at the end of the day.

This really helps to build the glass half full way of thinking, she seems stuck in the glass is totally empty mindset

I haven’t read the responses, just coming to say we have exactly the same 7 year old girl. She’s certainly very serious, we get that feedback from teachers too. She’s an absolute rule follower too. And she seems to have a very negative outlook on life.

We do the gratitude thing every evening. I also have to remind herself that she is who she is. We adore her, whether she’s grumpy or not. Her sister is very happy, which I think helps her lighten up. I also make sure she does lots of spending time outside playing and sport so she has some happy hormones generated! We work really hard on her mental health, and have even wondered whether to get her some therapy to try and help change her mindset.

I do also think being 7 is a hormone pinch point, so I’m assuming it’s partially due to that.

Sorry that was a bit of a brain dump. Just wanted to let you know you’re not alone.

@DrRichardWebber our DDs sound very similar!
It’s hard I feel she’s so young to be going down the mental health route…but if she was a teen honestly I’d think she had depression! Her go to emotion is mopey/negative. Poor old thing i feel sad her her as it means she feels her life isn’t good which objectively it is!

I'm coming at it from a different angle.
Do you give her attention? Try to jolly her out of it?
Could it be an attention getter?

My brother was negative about everything from a bit older than this. I realised (as cynical big sister) that it was a certain amount of manipulation of my parents who were worried that he didn't seem to enjoy anything.

This was the sort of thing I mean:
Mum tells me that she's taking him to do activity we all like. She asks me not to come because she wants to make sure he enjoys it.
They come back and she says "wasn't that fun?"
He says, "I only did it because you wanted to do it. It was boring."
Mum suggests they play a game together.
So they play, and when they finish he says "I only played that because you wanted to."
So Mum gets what he really likes for lunch and gives him half the packet of donuts leaving the rest of us half each (no that isn't an exaggeration).
He says, "I had to eat them because I didn't want to see them wasted but I don't really like them...."

I think you probably get the picture. But it all blew up when he was mid teens and he'd been his normal negative about something and dm decided not to go, and he was furious. She realised that actually he had been enjoying things but (I'll be kind) he expressed himself differently. And so she stopped giving attention when he was negative about things, and he stopped being as negative once he found it didn't get him what he wanted.

@MargaretThursday that’s interesting thank you for that. I have tried various things- usually chivvy her along, try to distract or make her laugh or sometimes ignore if she won’t come round. I feel awful walking along with a red eyed wobbly lipped 7 year old walking 5 feet behind though! And she just doesn’t stop it’s not like after 5 mins she just gets over it.
shes very much a rule follower so I don’t know whether next weekend to say ‘if at any point you get in a mood or sulk we are going straight home’ and stick to it. But I feel bad starting the day like that it feels all wrong and like we are expecting her to behave badly which feels unfair.

I'd probably go for something along the lines of "if you are cheerful" (or however you want to put it) then we will <insert bribery here> at the end/way home.
(like get an ice cream)

And then ignore any negative comments or sulks through the day. And see how she responds to that. Don't ignore her, but treat her the same as the younger one. Ignore any negative comments.

I will say that my observations were as an unsympathetic older sister, and, whereas at the time I resented it a lot, I can now see as a parent where dm was coming from.

Another thought from my childhood is does she have different interests to the rest of the family? I hated going on walks and the rest of my family loved it (yes, my brother still sulked his way round at the time!) and so I could be a stroppy little brat on walks.
That didn't matter most of the time when we did different things, but on one time we'd had several weekends running where we'd been dragged gone on a long boring walk then I can remember being told I was always moaning.
On average I was normally a fairly cheerful child, but I didn't like walks. So it wasn't that I was always moaning, just I felt we were "always" doing things I didn't like and I wasn't ever given any choice in it. My parents didn't really do the "what would you like to do?" to us dc.

I wonder how it would work if you said to both the dc that they can choose one activity and you as parents choose one each, and you don't complain at the other ones. Obviously over a few days not all on the same one.
Maybe she's just beginning to feel she wants to be doing her own thing and is too big to be dragged around (she isn't, but it's the age to want a bit of independence).

It might also be worth dropping into the conversation things like having to do the food shop and how you find it so boring, but it's necessary. Just to make the point that as adults we also have to do things we don't like. I remember that being a real eyeopener when dm commented that she hated taking the car for a service. (yes, I was quite small) because I thought it quite fun (we went somewhere we didn't normally go) and I thought grown ups only did what they wanted - didn't realise about necessity! 😂

@4pmwinetimebebeh thought you might appreciate that my 7 year old woke up this morning, heard someone laughing outside, and with a dark look on her face said ‘why is someone laughing so hard it’s very annoying’.

Such a misery!! Let me know if you figure out the solution.