Reply to Does this warrant an appointment with a counselor?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wonder if this were a boy saying this if the response are the same. My tween boy says he doesn't like babies or little kids. He was on flight where a baby cried for hours and toddlers screamed which reinforced his opinion. Somehow I don't think people are as concerned when boys say this compared to girls. [/quote]

Np - I would not be concerned that she doesn’t like babies or little kids. Many people do lot (or they just like their own). The concerning statement is that she would leave a baby to die.

Before calling a therapist (and my kids have seen many), I would try to delve deeper with her to see if she really feels that way and why. If she helps a baby on the side of the road (a very unlikely scenario for her to ever encounter), she wouldn’t have to keep it, etc. but helping others is good, etc. [/quote]

She’s still just 11, which is young enough not to understand what she actually said.  Lecturing her that “helping others is good” is something adults do to make themselves feel better. The more socially saavy kids will respond with what they know the adult wants to hear - which the adults process as “oh what a good girl with empathy!” but actually is just an indication that the child knows what adults want to hear. Which is important developmentally, but represents social skills, not underlying morality.

So the conversation you actually need to have with a kid like this is in fact geared towards social skills - understanding that statements like that (even if joking) make other people upset.

This isn’t literally about a baby on the side of the road (absurd) but about how the child can learn to make a good impression. It’s more akin to manners and not morality. Because at the end of the day, the child in her clumsy way was expressing something that is a totally valid feeling - she notices she doesn’t like kids the way she is “supposed” to. The key is not to make her like babies, or feel ashamed that she “is not like other girls,” but to learn how to express herself better. [/quote]

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