Children can feel jealousy, just like adults can. Unfortunately, children don't always know how to handle these feelings of jealousy and may act out. It is tempting for a parent to shame or scold their child but this can make the situation even worse. Instead, parents need to teach their children how to effectively deal with feelings of jealousy, starting at a young age.
How to teach your child to deal with jealousy effectively. Jealously is an emotion that people tend to feel right into adulthood so it is best to teach your child how to effectively deal with this emotion from an early age. Children can get jealous for a variety of reasons: a new sibling, lack of attention from parents, a new friend or partner enters the parent's life or even may be jealous in nature. Jealously can manifest itself in a broad range of naughty behaviors. If a child experiences sibling rivalry, he or she may become more aggressive when handling the new baby. Other symptoms are blatant naughty acts that they know will get your attention and will do them on purpose. Another way children may deal with jealously is to demonstrate excessive affection towards the object or person that cites the jealousy. All of these things are ways of coping with the jealous emotions a child may feel. There are some dos and don'ts of jealousy to help your child how to properly deal with their feelings.
Don't punish your child. As tempting as it may be, do not punish your child for his or her feelings of jealousy. Jealousy is a human emotion that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. Teach them how to handle the situation that causes him or her to feel jealous and how to cope effectively with their feelings.
Treat your child as an individual. Your child is different than his or her siblings and shouldn't be compared to them. One child's reaction to feelings of jealousy may be very different to those of your other children.
Have some alone time with your child. It is important that each child gets to spend time with his or her parents so be sure to schedule some time just for the two (or three) of you. This may be more difficult to do if there is a new baby involved but it's important to do the best you can. Your child needs to know that he or she is still loved and is still an important member of the family.
Teach your child to learn from jealousy. Children need to learn how to cope with jealous feelings in childhood so they can carry the methods with them into adulthood. Discuss feelings of jealousy with your child and help them to understand these feelings for when they feel them again. Don't discount their feelings but instead talk to them about how to deal with them (ie walk away from a situation, distract themselves etc).
Get professional help. As a last resort, professional help might be required. If your attempts to help your child deal with his or her jealousy don't seem to be effective, it might be time to seek professional help. This is especially the case in sibling rivalry as you don't want the feelings to get out of control.