House envy - my 4yr old is in the grip of it grrrr

[Octobernow]

We went for tea after school today to a new friend's house. It was huge. Our flat would have completely on any one of its four storeys. When we got home, dd2 said 'I wish I lived in xxx's house' and when I asked her why, she said it was much better than ours with more stuff in it and she wanted us to move somewhere bigger. I know I am premenstrual atm, but this has really got to me. My mother was ashamed of our house and never let us invite any friends home at all (she was a snob without the means to be one). It's brought back all that angst about being surrounded by people with more money than us - we went to private school that my parents literally scraped money to pay for. We were the classic no-carpets no holidays poor family and all my other schoolfriends lived in houses you couldn't see from the road, with gravel driveways and pools. I don't want my girls to feel second class all their lives like we did. Must move away from the South West, I suppose.

Oops am going off into ridiculously self indulgent rant here so I probably won't press the post button...

..bugger, too late!

it is hard i know. we live in a failry bog standard 3 bed semi and even that doesn't satisfy my ds1 when he is in that mood. so and so's house is bigger than ours, so and so's tv is bigger than ours, so and so's car is better than ours and it goes on and on.
don't feel bad, i'm sure given teh choice your dd would much rather live with you in your flat than somewhere else, they just seem to know how to puch the right buttons don't they?

We have a lot of the same round here. Dd's friend's mainly have much bigger houses than ours (we live in a flat). Now though she's 8 and we have more of a conversation about it, usually me agreeing that it would be lovely etc. Sometimes though I do get a bit p*ed off though that they have nice houses and dd would prefer to live there, and I let her know I find it upsetting. We then discuss whats great about living here and how bad it would be to live in a big house (all that housework would take up valuable time when we could be doing something fun).

Well in my experience of a very comfortable upbringing and living in a very nice house now - there is always someone with a bigger and better one, in all walks of life!

Envy for material things is really a waste of emotions and affects poor and rich alike!

Perhaps discuss with your DD what she thinks makes a home rather than a house and get her to value the love and warmth of her home rather than the bricks and mortar!

I did say to her that our place may be small but it's our home, where we all relax and cuddle up together. She wasn't moved by that at all. I know there are always bigger and better houses and I know it's a waste of emotion, but as I say it's brought back all my childhood inferiority issues. Still, If I was that bothered I'd have chosen to do Law at school, not Drama

I get the same of my dd, she comes home from her Dad's family wanting to know why she doesn't have a swimming pool? Why don't we have horses in the garden? Why do we live in such a small house? Why don't we have a lady to tidy up after us? It goes on and on. It amuses me because as Soapbox said no matter how much you have you will always find someone who has more.

well if it makes you feel any better (which it probably doesn't) my dd (7) always says "why can't we live in a cottage mummy?" everytime we go to anyone else's normal sized house.
so you can never win

lol octobernow , my Mum is always saying to me well if you had studied law rather than theology....

lol pph, at the end of our road is a block of flats on a green. Dd s always saying "That house is huge mummy and look at their garden"

my ds vaguely fascinated by flats

my ds says he never wants to live in a flat "because then you couldn't bottom bump down the stairs"

true enough I suppose...!

I do wonder, if they 'd shown us at in careers advice lessons at school a picture of the kind of house we would be able to afford next to a job description - would we have made a different choice?

DD and I spent most of the summer in a house that is roughly 5x larger (and much prettier) than our flat. In spite of all the extra space, I found that most of the time, dd was right with me in the same room. When I asked her why, she said she felt lonely and afraid to be so "far away" from me. So, even though I'm sometimes desperate for more space here in London (and envy those who have it), after this summer, I realise it would take some adjusting to learn how to use the extra room.

Also, when dd reminisces about the house, she says she liked her bedroom there better because it was "pink"....not because it was larger, or had an ensuite bathroom, or beautiful curtains, etc....so, in other words, all the things that would have made it seem nicer to me, didn't register with her. The thing she envied was the pink walls. Just goes to show that the things a 4 year old envies, are often very superficial.

Sounds like you've done the right thing by pointing out all the things that are nice about where you live, and saying also that "different people live different ways".

My ds is such a homebody. He just likes being at home. He prefers it to anywhere else. Ideally with all his family. It's not tiny and it's certainly not huge, but it has his books, his bed and his baby sister in it, so he likes it. My stepdaughter's stepfather is immensely rich and they live in a vast house with enormous garden but she has never ever compared ours unfavourably. She loves her room in our house and prefers it in some ways because the streets are quieter and she can ride her bike to the best sweetshop in the world.
I do remember as a child wanting to live in a stately home though. I really wanted old furniture and bowls of lavender. Too much Agatha Christie at a formative age, I suspect.

As a child I wanted to go to boarding school - Malory Towers was to blame.

Me too twinset and pearls.

Enid Blyton must have been sponsored by an association of boarding schools.

I so desperately wanted to experience sneaking about in the dorm for a midnight feast with lashings of ginger beer.