I hate to say this and this is very difficult, humbling, and embarrassing to even type out, but my kid is very unlikable. She doesn't have a lot of friends, and the "friends" she does have are on-and-off because she's such a giant pain in the ass to be around.She has older and younger siblings and she's the only one in the family who's like this. She's only 7 but she seems to have the mentality of "that 55+ old lady" at work who literally argues with everything and finds a million reasons not to be gracious, thankful, appreciative, understanding, empathetic, sympathetic, or any of the other characteristics that make people want to be friends with you. Her teachers have very diplomatically told us the same thing about her. She has a very abrasive personality and she cannot let things go. She's already come home multiple times telling us that this kid or that called her a bitch. She hasn't been invited to a single birthday party in 2 years.I used to be kind of like that but nobody ever talked to me about it in terms of having to change my behaviour as a kid, and I have always had a few really close friends and never had any issues with co-workers. I was never shunned, and I always got invited to parties, etc, and that was back when "mandatory" invitations were not even remotely a thing. Somehow these parents have circumvented the process and managed to get invitations to other kids and avoid her (I think if the invitations are not passed around at school they can be selective, but if they are handed out at school they have to be 100% inclusive). One of her classmates lives 10 houses down and she saw that she was having a party last weekend and she was pretty hurt that she wasn't invited. The worst feedback I ever got from a non-family member was that sometimes I was a bit too argue-y. My family was a little harsher, but overall the issue was that it was a minor personality flaw, not my entire identity. The Dale Carnegie book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" was recommended to me and it literally changed my life. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the TL;DR is that it's okay for people around you to be wrong. Unless it's a life and death situation in an air traffic control tower or operating room, there's no need for you to be right about everything. It causes people embarrassment and makes them feel stupid...and you're the one they associate that negative feeling with, so they don't like you, and if/when the people around you see you do that, they don't like you either. I became a different person after reading that book, and people noticed.The problem is her age, and the fact that she completely lacks empathy, I don't know how to drill it into her head on a level she'll understand, and I've never seen anything in any parenting books that cover this. She literally cannot put herself in other peoples' shoes and she is completely self-centred. I get that's standard kids behaviour, but this is off the charts compared to every other kid I've known.I once read a comment in an askreddit thread where the question was "what was one of your biggest life-changing moments?" and one of the top answers was that someome said their mother once told them "Honey, I love you, but you are a very difficult person to be around." Again, not something I want to drop on my 7 year old but it's still a sentiment I'd like to relay to her in an age-appropriate way.So...has anyone ever dealt with this, with kids this age, and what kind of success did you have? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2qM60kB
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