Why Does My Kid Get So Jealous?
You’re at the kitchen table helping her brother with his spelling words — eleven of them, and he’s stuck on “because.” And suddenly she’s at your elbow. She needs a snack. She needs her shoe tied. She needs you to watch this, right now. When you say “in a minute,” she slides to the floor and announces that it’s not fair and you always help him. It’s 5:15. You didn’t even do anything.
Why does my child get so jealous?
The short answer: jealousy is one of the oldest feelings a child has, and it was in her long before the spelling words were. In a 2002 study, researchers at Texas Tech University watched thirty-two six-month-old babies while their mothers took turns paying attention to a lifelike baby doll and a book. The babies got more upset when the attention went to the “baby.” The researchers read it as an early form of jealousy — at six months old, long before a single word.
That study was about babies, not five-year-olds. But the point travels. When your five-year-old falls apart while you’re helping her brother, she probably isn’t being mean or spoiled. A very difficult feeling showed up before she had the words for it.
What actually helps
Say it out loud for her. “That’s a jealous feeling. It’s okay to have it.” She doesn’t have to have the word yet for you to hand it over.
Keep the feeling and the behavior in separate boxes. Feeling jealous is allowed. Kicking the table leg is not. You can say both in the same breath, and she can hear both.
Don’t argue the fairness math right now. Whether you really always help him is a conversation for later, if at all. Right now there’s a feeling in the room, and it’s hers.
Where the Krewelings come in
Flicker is a fox, and Flicker’s feeling is jealous — arms crossed, side-eye, tail twitching. “I’m jealous that you’re helping him” is a hard sentence at five. “I feel like Flicker” is an easy one. That gives the feeling a name and a face — and it gives you something to answer besides the snack, the shoe, and the unfairness of the universe. And Flicker isn’t done with this feeling either. Just like your kid, Flicker is still learning what to do when it shows up — that’s what the fox’s cards are for.
When is it more than jealous?
If jealousy turns into hurting — hitting, biting, shoving — step in and separate the kids until everyone has calmed down; that’s straight from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is clear that parents shouldn’t ignore or downplay aggressive fighting between siblings. If it keeps happening, or if anyone gets hurt, talk to your pediatrician — Nemours and the AAP both list hurting others as a reason to call.
It’s okay to feel what you feel — jealous included.
Read next: It Was Never About the Cracker — when the big feeling is mad. And to find your child’s feeling friend, take the quiz.
