Do your children assign blame/fault to incidents?

[Earlybird]

DD (age 6 and an only child) seems focused on laying blame/assigning responsibility for things that happen. Some recent examples:

1. She was in the park with a friend, and both were scootering up and down a big hill while the parents chatted. DD got going very fast and took quite a tumble which resulted in torn trousers and scraped knees/elbows and bumped head. I went to her immediately. Once I had comforted her and the initial shock was gone, I asked 'how did it happen'? She has said several times on different occasions that it was partly my fault for reasons I can't quite fathom. It clearly wasn't my fault (unless I should have stopped her from scootering so fast), but don't want to 'blame' her. (Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?) Is she saying I should have protected her somehow? How would you respond?

1. We were on holiday with a rented car over Easter break. While on a motorway, a pebble flew off the back of a lorry in front of us, and hit the windscreen of our car, causing a large crack to appear. We went to the car rental office to report the incident, and were told that it was my financial responsibility as the car was in my possession when the incident happened. I was not happy about it, and discussed it further - no raised voices. DD became very distressed/began to cry, and kept saying 'but it wasn't your fault mummy'.

1. Two of her friends were arguing at school. It evidently got quite heated. DD tried to intervene as peacemaker, but was not successful and things escalated. She was telling me of the incident, and wailed 'I tried to help, but I just made it worse. It was my fault it got worse'.

I think it's probably to do with wanting to understand why things happen, how the world works and a desire to be in control...'if you do this, that will happen' or 'because you did that, the other will happen'. Clearly, there are many things that are beyond our control. Life is not predictable, and sometimes completely illogical.

Typical phase? Issue that needs to be addressed before it escalates? How would you handle?

Think it is a phase- my ds went through similar. its a rough lesson to learn that life is sometimes unfair, and that we cant always protect them. Rough,but important. Hopefully, a sense of personal responsibility ensues. She sounds like she has a high EQ and i would just explain that life is sometimes unfair and that this can be frustrating and doesnt mean that we should stop trying to help or do the right thing. or something!!! hth

I think they do go through a phase where they are working out 'cause and effect'. Also, they learn a fair bit of this through school where they observe incidents like children getting away with stuff and other children getting into trouble iyswim.

One of mine gets v stressed about this sort of thing (dd, the 6 yr old) and the other one isn't that bothered (funnily enough, he's my more stressy, competitive child).

I also think it's a sort of perfectionist trait isn't it - wanting everything to be perfect and not wanting to have done anything wrong.

My DS is too small to have reached this phase but I remember it from my own childhood/siblings etc and I think your DD sounds normal. I think it may be to do with starting school, where teachers begin to lay heavy emphasis on Fair/Unfair and Who Did This? in playground incidents. Children with siblings probably encounter this earlier as they tend to naturally allocate blame during arguments, but for an only child perhaps it's more of a shock?

I do remember being obsessed with fair and unfair as a child, especially from the age of about 6-8, to the extent that I can still recall incidents now that I considered unjust at that time!

This is an interesting thread. My dd (aged 6) assigns blame (unfairly) to myself and dp when accidents happen (eg. she (!) bumps into us!)...I hope it is a phase ...because it brings with it an air of negativity which is really quite unnecessary. How to get her out of this? Well we do say 'it's no-one's fault..it just happened' but not sure she buys this