The Will To Dominate
The following article deals with a very important subject that we have touched on before but never discussed in detail—a child’s will to dominate. I chose this letter because it so clearly represents the many letters we receive.
Though this mother has a good attitude and represents her responses as calm and controlled, she has failed to properly train. She is perplexed because her younger daughter is not so dominant. She feels there is something different about this one. All children occasionally manifest a will to dominate, but only a few are as intense as this child. Things can get out of hand in a hurry.
I underlined portions of her letter to draw your attention to key statements that reveal the child’s attitude.
I know this article is going to liberate many of you from uncertainties that have kept you from being firm and forceful with your little dictators.
I have also given practical solutions for eradicating this diabolical will to dominate.
Dear Michael and Debi,
Our daughter Sue is almost four. She has been a handful right from birth. In the hospital nursery they had to keep her in a separate room because her screaming disrupted the other babies! The hospital nursery workers told my husband that we were going to have our hands full. Sue never wanted to be cuddled until she was sick for the first time at 8 months of age. She wouldn’t even let us take her hand to show her things, even pat-a-cake! Sue was frustrated (and still is) about everything. frustrated that she couldn’t roll, mad that she couldn’t sit, furious that she couldn’t walk or talk.
We didn’t help matters by always putting her to sleep by means of walking, rocking, or nursing. Consequently, she never learned patience. We always went to her or picked her up with the first whimper, since we knew it would soon turn into a full blown, purple faced, raging fit. She had a temper. Finally at eleven months of age we began proper and consistent training, and when she turned one she at last began sleeping through the night.
When I asked her to put up her toys, she would throw the toys the other way, even after I would make a fun game of it, doing most of it myself. Or sometimes she would pick one item up as slow as a turtle, or place the toy on the edge of the bucket, so more often than not it would fall out, not in.
And yes, after a long time of working on the cleanup concept, I’m sure I applied pressure – nothing ever got cleaned up!
She’s still the same, picking up items with her feet or mouth
