3.5 yr olds who answer back!

[Rosieeo]

DD (3.5) can be a little madam, she's always been stubborn and prone to thrashing around on the floor if she doesn't get her own way. Over the past couple of weeks she's started to answer me back, sometimes just saying 'no' when I ask her to do something, sometimes adding a reason of sorts (I don't want to, it smells, its for babies etc), sometimes muttering under her breath at me if I have made her do something she doesn't want to do (I actually listened closely today and it went 'mumble dilly runner tilly beans mumble mummy mumble' iyswim, so nothing awful!)

It's already driving me nuts! She is a lovely, funny, sweet and happy little girl and I hate myself for getting so annoyed with her back-chat and feet-dragging.

Any tips? She responds really well to praise and reward charts etc but this seems to be all the time.

Just read this back and it seems very tame, but I don't want it to continue!

[piscesmoon]

I wouldn't go down the road of reward charts for what should be normal behaviour. She is being a normal 3 yr old who is discovering that she has choices. I would try not to get into direct conflict e.g instead if saying 'we won't go out until you have your shoes on', assume that she will do it and say 'when you have your shoes on we will go out'. Give her some (limited) choice -e.g 'do you want the blue top or the red top?'. Ignore the bad behaviour as much as possible-when she calms down just calmly say 'mummy can't understand when you cry/shout-tell me quietly what you wanted'.
Give her plenty of attention when good.

[Rosieeo]

I see what you mean. I do tell her that she is a good girl, but it's easy to forget to praise when she has done something straight away (because I expect it!) but then to get annoyed when she doesn't. I can get around the feet-dragging, it's the back-chat that I find soooooo irritating!

[dilemma456]

Message withdrawn

[tryingtoleave]

My DS does this all the time and he's only just 3. But maybe because he's younger it's not quite so sophisticated and it's a bit funnier. I tell him he can't have a knife because it's dangerous, he tells me it's not dangerous and that he 'needs the knife' for his work. I say it's hot, he says it's cold. I usually just laugh at him and that seems to deal with it quite well. Might not be so useful with an older child though.