My 6 year old is in a constant mood and complaining - is this normal ?

[ahwhys]

It makes me feel like the worst mum ever. She’s always annoyed, sighing and going ‘ aaghh ‘.

it will be things like in the morning - not wanting to go to school, not wanting to get dressed. She does get dressed but with a lot of ‘ Argh this is so boring why do I need to do this ‘. Or if I can’t take her to the playground after school she complains or it she can’t have something she just complains and complains.

for example just now she’s moaning because she lost the makeup brushes of the set her grandma got her yesterday. So I gave her some of mine and that’s not good enough.

how can I stop this or is this just normal ? I dread to think how moody she’ll be as a teenager.

When she complains do you answer and engage? I say: you have asked that question and I have already answered. This conversation is over. You can always say I understand you're feeling frustrated (Mixed success).

Do you introduce play to boring jobs? Like racing her to get dressed? Or go low arousal and using pictograms for the stuff she has to do.

With the playground example - had she been looking forward to it all day? Could you manage expectations in the morning?

At one point I had a sticker chart for DD. Every morning she got out of the door without crying got a sticker. 4 stickers in a week got a little treat of some sort.

Tbh I remember childhood as being constantly told what to do by adults and it was boring and felt like I was never good enough. So I do have some sympathy with her!

Completely missing the point here - but why has a 6 year old got make up brushes?

I think it's just temperament, not necessarily anything you've done or could do differently. I have 4 children, and one of them is like this, can always find a reason to complain. One of mine is a very happy character and always cheerful and laughing. The other 2, more "normal" range. I just acknowledge the feeling, without being dismissive, but also don't run around trying to "fix" every complaint.

I feel your pain. My 7 year old son likes a good moan… at most things. Everything feels like hard work sometimes. I honestly feel like he hasn’t made it out of the toddler stage.
I have an older daughter and she wasn’t like this, I didn’t know whether boys just emotionally matured later than girls… but that theory wouldn’t work in your case. Each year I keep thinking/hoping he will grow out of it. Apart from this he’s great, very clever, ahead of his peers, very caring/loving.

So why ask then ? Are you trying to shame us ? She has makeup brushes because she likes to play with makeup. It’s not weird. Lots of girls do it, they put makeup on themselves/ their dolls.

she doesn’t wear makeup to go out.

her grandma got her a makeup book which has pages in it and you can put makeup on the faces drawn on the pages. Not that weird.

I have one of these, same age. It really tests her dad and me at times. She sees the downside to every situation. She's always been like this so to some extent I think it's just her temperament. I hope that she will get better as she matures emotionally, although I have been waiting for this improvement for, oh, about 4 years now. 😂

Tbf if I got a nice gift from my grandma and lost it I’d probably moan too! I’d probably just engage once with whatever her current gripe is and then ignore.

I get it. And I tried to help her look etc and I acknowledged her upset and gave her my brushes that are way better anyway. But she was still annoyed for ages and complaining.

It is weird at 6 years old. Not trying to shame you but wtf?

I don’t think it’s weird at all. All her friends play with child makeup too. They don’t go out wearing makeup. It’s like face painting. Each to their own but I really don’t think it’s weird or see any kind of problem with it.

She’s bored. And waiting for you to provide entertainment/sweets/attention/find the items she’s lost.
But being bored is good!
Try to tune out the complaining, try to stop negotiating with her and enable her to get used to playing a bit by herself.
Art and craft, reading, bit of screen time, even putting make up on dolls (and yes, I agree with you @ahwhys , all children like to experiment with make-up, it doesn’t turn them into Bonnie Blue) will all help develop a bit of independence.

And she might just have a bit of a grumpy character; I’m a teacher and I quite like the grumpy ones🤣.

I think in modern parenting sometimes we misrepresent life to our kids…

We jolly them along and try to stop them from having negative experiences as much as possible.

I have two suggestions

1)As the great Philippa Perry says, “feel with, don’t deal with”

Life IS hard. Issues that seem small to you are genuinely big to her. She’s expressing that.

Try listening and not correcting her. Maybe she has a point. Maybe she needs you to show you understand. “Yes, I can see that’s difficult/upsetting/tiring” makes her feel seen, and not corrected.

2)Don’t fall in to the trap of trying to fix every complaint and prevent her from experiencing life’s annoyances. She needs to be able to develop resilience, and the only way to do that is by feeling frustration, and coping with it.

Tell her if she has ideas to improve things, you can help her find ways to make things better. But don’t leap into fix.

x

There's a book called How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, it used to be like the MN parenting bible it is a bit dated now, esp the "what not to do" examples, but I still think most of the time it works really well.

I think what it would say about the makeup brushes would be rather than offer a solution/replacement, try just validating the feeling e.g. "Oh no, that's a shame, you were really enjoying those." or "Ach, it's so annoying when something goes missing." or even just a single word/sound e.g. "Bummer!" "Ugh!" or a sympathetic-sounding "Hmm" (obviously, choose something you'd naturally say).

Avoid the tempation to offer reassurance (e.g. "I'm sure they'll turn up") or suggestions/criticism (e.g. "Well you should have put them away properly!" / "Why don't you try tidying your room?")

Obviously if she actually asks you for help or a solution, then don't withold it if you have an idea, but try not automatically stepping in to fix her upset, and see what happens.