Attachment to Objects

[SLD]

Bookworm, acknowledge her feelings. She's not interjecting herself into adult matters. She's expressing herself which in this day and age is acceptable. What isn't acceptable is going overboard. Tears aren't needed over a napkin, or a car, etc. I do agree with the overall idea of carrying on with what you need to do without much acknowledgement of her behavior. Deal with the behavior separately.

I'm curious, do tears etc. get her any sort of results any other time?

IF she is dealing with anxiety then ignoring it won't help. You can't "release her" from it. If that is what's going on, you will need to learn how to help her with it. I have a child with an anxiety disorder, ignoring his needs would be the absolute worst thing we could do. We did need to teach him that going to extremes wouldn't net results. We also needed to teach him that we were there to help him.. ignoring him/telling him we were the adults and would decide would have shown him the exact opposite. This came from a child psychologist, and I can tell you as his mom that simply telling him the grown ups would handle it only increased his anxiety. In his mind, he didn't believe we could handle it. It took years to get him through it, and honestly he still has issues.

Reassure her that it's okay to give away/sell the things you don't need anymore, then remind her that you would never get rid of something your family needs.

Good luck with it.