Who’s the Boss?

Q: My soon-to-be five-year-old son is extremely bossy. While this was rather charming when he was a toddler, it has become quite exasperating! He likes to tell his friends what to do (“Throw the football like this, not like that”), me how to set the table (“Put the napkin like this!”) and his father how to give him a hug. Is this normal? What can I do to stop our little boss?

A: What’s cute in a two-year-old has become tedious in a preschooler. Your son is acting perfectly normal for his age. Some children have more of a tendency to be more bossy than others, but generally all kids like to tell others how to do something or how to behave. But in his case, it’s also become a bad habit, one he can’t break on his own.

However, that doesn’t mean you should tolerate his bossy behavior toward you and her father (or any other adult, for that matter). I would leave the being bossy around his peers alone for now. He’ll eventually learn to moderate himself soon enough, as kids are notoriously good at telling other children to back off or stop it.

Image courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You can curb his corrections towards you by employing the ticket system. You tell him the targeted behavior is telling you or his father what to do. He’ll have three “free” ticket a day (strips of colored paper will do). Each day, he starts off with his three ticket margin of error. During the day, whenever he tries to be the boss, he loses one ticket. If he loses all three tickets before the end of the day, he’s confined to his room for the rest of the day and is put to bed directly after an early supper.

Each time he tells you what to do or what shouldn't be done (same thing), you just smile and say, "That's a ticket!" Direct him to pluck one off the fridge or get it yourself. The key is to not talk about the behavior beyond calling the ticket. He'll likely run through his tickets fairly quickly at first, but he'll soon realize his bossiness is only getting him into his room.

I think you’ll find that as he learns to stop bossing you and your husband around, he will also be less bossy with his friends.

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