The Selfish Child by Judy Lyden

Last night I watched a movie in which a character called Mary - whose only purpose in life was to gush - mostly about herself - spewed the most unbelievable trivia about her own life. She took up everybody's time with her me, me, me palaver. It was always about Mary. When the man she was interested in introduced her to his new girl friend, the selfishness took a new dimension and poured out of her in an incredible savagery grizzled like a string of shark teeth.

Mary is like a lot of people we know. The selfish, self centered people who always put themselves first, second, third, last and only and never realize how tedious they are.

These people are loathsome and you can write the scenario. You meet someone after a long absence and innocently say, "Hi, Sue! How have you been?" and the response is "Well, I'm...me...I...me...I...me...for five minutes straight with never even a thought about asking about you until you want to run and hide. Even when Sue asks about you, she doesn't really want to hear a response, and when you try to get a foot in the conversational door, they don't hear a world. It's boorishness.

And it has a beginning. It begins with poor parenting at two. Most two year old children are the center of the their own world, and that world is the only world. If they could speak clearly, they would tell you so. The tyrannical two year old, the selfish child, begins to shape his or her personalities with either aggressive behavior or passive aggressive behavior. Stubbornness, refusal, entitlement, self regard all begin at two and it comes from parents who never see the child's behavior as negative simply because they don't see their own behavior which is parallel.

Many parents of selfish children have a high regard for themselves. It's simple, they are better than other people; they are socially a cut above everyone else. In other words, they are snobs. Snobs model a behavior that will become the quest-point of a tyrant.

By three, a child who has taught himself to be stubborn, to refuse direction, who feels entitled to a host of extras and has a self regard that cuts himself off from the next child is headed down a really vacuous life road. Selfish children with an entitlement agenda who rarely give into others have trouble making friends. The desire to either push others around and bully or refuse friendship with a silent moroseness is a big red light to children of a less selfish bend.

Selfish children want not only their turn but everybody else's turn and they can never seem to figure out why they can't have all the turns. Or, similarly, they don't want a turn at all because it would mean "slumming." They may not be able to express themselves to this degree, but it's there and it's taking root.

As the child grows, life tasks are pushed onto others and the "excuse" becomes the golden rule tool. "I tried to help making the bed, but my mother made it over, so I'll never make it again." This statement has nothing to do with mother, and nothing to do with the task being poorly executed. It has to do with the selfish child finding an excuse never to lift her excellent finger to help anyone again. With children, with the less mature, with spoiled selfish people, we hear it all the time.

Envy, jealousy, anger are all attributes of the selfish child. Compassion, sympathy, mercy are not. A selfish child will not care if someone is hurt because they don't care. They want to know how they fit into the equation, what they are going to get, what they are going to have to side step.

When something good happens to Jane, the selfish Jaxine is angry. Most likely, Jaxine will either refuse to acknowledge Jane's success, or say little, or if at all possible, sabotage it. And Jaxine will undoubtedly tell Jane that her success is nothing at all compared to someone else she knows.

This behavior buds in the earliest classroom, playground and playroom play. You hear it all the time. When a child dresses up and looks like a little princess in dress up and gets her picture taken by the teacher, the selfish child will call her names and say, quite unabashedly that the dress is ugly, that the princess is not her friend.

The average child is thrilled with another child's birthday because there is a sharing. It never occurs to him or her that it's not his own birthday. The jealous child, Jaxine, however, is angry that it is not her birthday, and can't even wish her friend happiness. She is angry and lets the day go buy without even so much as a kind word to her friend.

We all know people like this. We all have encountered people who behave like Jaxine.

And the problem with the selfish child is that he or she comes from parents who are just like him or her. Selfishness is bred. It is modeled by the elder for the younger. So fixing it is not going happen at home.

What do non-selfish people do with the selfish child? There is nothing a teacher can do to make a child or anyone else think or feel differently from what is inside that person. The only thing a teacher can do is to not allow the outward, uncaring, non-participatory behavior. By saying no to a child quite as a matter of fact will do more than anything else.