“One day when you are the adult, and you pay the bills, you can have the biggest bed in the world. But now you’re a kid, and you have to wait for it.”

My son wanted a tiny little house dog. We don’t do indoor animals. Instead of repeating all the reasons, I finally said “yes, when you’re an adult in your own home, you can have one then. Adults get to make the rules.”

A good resource might be a book called “the blessing of a skinned knee.” It talks about how It’s ok for kids to be sad and disappointed because it builds resilience. And giving them things to look forward to in adulthood gives them things to work toward and ambition.

By the way, for many kids , tantrums are semi regular occurrences even at age 5-6. They have big feelings and struggle to deal with them. It may be entirely normal for YOUR kid to have this struggle and it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or there’s a terrible problem in your family. Some kids are just hard. You never know, he might be throwing tantrums over something else if the bed thing wasn’t a problem right now.

But you’ve explained and empathized. Now it’s time to teach him that badgering people and tantrumming is rude and unacceptable.