Bossy Brenda

Brenda is a girl who likes to be in

control. Sometimes she also demands
for a lot of things and expect them
to be given to her immediately.

When Brenda was at school, she often took her favourite books
from the classroom reading corner and forbade her classmates
from reading them. Mr Ting, her class teacher told her,
‘Brenda, please share the books with your classmates. Why
wouldn’t you share them?’. Brenda would say, ‘I don’t want to
share!’

During recess, she would tell her friends to play with her only
and stop other classmates from joining her game play. She
would also ask for more cookies from her teacher after the
teacher has already told the class that each one of them was
only allowed one cookie. When the teacher told her ‘No’, she
would then become angry and throw things on the floor.

At home, Brenda did not allow her sister to play with her toys
or go into her bedroom. When it was bedtime, she would still
sit in front of the TV and continue watching even though her
parents told her many times that it was time to sleep. She
would quickly become upset and make a fuss when her parents
turned off the TV for her. She would scream, ‘I still want to
watch!’

Brenda’s classmates started to call her ‘Bossy Brenda’. They

left her out of their games during recess and no one wanted to
pair up with her for school project. Her sister also stopped
sharing her toys with Brenda and did not want to play with her
at all at home. Brenda felt lonely, she felt left out from
everyone. She was very sad and confused. She did not
understand why everyone was like that. Seeing this, Brenda’s
mum said to her, ‘Do you remember how you always like to
control everything? And that can make others upset too. There
are some things you can control and there are some things you
can’t. You can’t control your friends, your teacher, your sister
and mummy daddy. Why don’t we find out together the things
you can control?’ Brenda was a little hesitant but she was
willing to give it a try.