What if your child is more of a follower

than a leader?

My oldest seems to be a bit of a follower around her classmates/friends and I don't want her to be.

I want her to listen to the teacher - forget about all the other distractions, copying others etc.....

How can i better reinforce this? She is an excellent student otherwise, is starting to read and writes very well.

I want her to be more independent, outspoken - she turned 5 in February.

TIA.

Re: What if your child is more of a follower

A lot of times, your posts about your older DD remind me of my older DD. She is definitely NOT a leader; in school especially she is a quiet girl who does exactly what she's told and hates to go against the grain. She's very fearful of doing the wrong thing or getting into trouble...as a result, she's definitely more of a follower although I wouldn't necessarily say she IS a follower, if that makes any sense.

I wish she were a different way because she is a lot like I was/am and I always wished I were more of a take-charge person, etc. I don't know that there's a whole lot you can do if that's what her nature is. I do always remind my DD to stand up for herself though. If someone makes fun of her or says, "I'm not your friend..." I tell her, "Guess what? She's right...she's not your friend if she would say something like that to you." I remind her that she is a wonderful girl who has so many great qualities and that there are many other people to be friends with.

On a more concrete level, I enroll her in several extra-curricular things to make a variety of friends and be able to function in different settings. So she does Daisy Scouts, art club and ballet. I also hope these things will increase her confidence in herself.

I don't know if this was of any help... I hope to hear some more responses as well!

Re: What if your child is more of a follower

Re: What if your child is more of a follower

I have to laugh because I was having a conversation about my son just recently and think the same thing of him. I think it is more now (just turned 5 in March) that he will be starting school and forming his friendships that I am more cautious of this. As a parent you can only control so many things and for me all I want is for him to have confidence and choose good people. But he tends to follow the silliness and I just foresee problems down the road. Call it paranoia, but I want him to be strong enough to stand on his own two feet and do what's right because he knows he should, not cause everyone else it. So I try to be more of a role model, I try to promote and encourage the things he does do well and hope that the positive reinforcement will stay with him in the days ahead.

Good Luck!

Re: What if your child is more of a follower

Not everyone is going to be a leader and I think that's perfectly ok. In fact, I think we tend to put too much emphasis on our children being leaders when really, we need to be teaching them that it's good to be a follower sometimes or most times, but to be so responsibly.
My advice is to teach her to respect the rules of her classroom and teach her to make good choices, even when others aren't. That's really the most valuable lesson you can teach her.
Just keep talking to her about it. I'll pose situations to my daughter and ask her what she would do. We kind of role play, I guess, because I want her to really learn that many, many times her friends will be doing things that are not ok and she cannot follow them all the time. It's hard to teach them that, but keep talking to her about it and she will learn.