To worry ds age five is becoming insufferable

[myfiveyo]

My five year old son has taken to being a real know it all, and to make matters worse he’s often wrong or misguided. He really irritated one of his friends today (to the point where they fell out) by constantly correcting him and telling him (wrong) facts. Then if another child tries to tell him something he snaps YES I KNOW.

I have tried to address it with him but he doesn’t seem to put it into practice in the moment.

How have you tried to address it so far?

It's quite a common pattern of behaviour at this age but it's definitely helpful to nip it in the bud. When he does it to you call him out on it every time, tell him you will not be putting up with it and you also won't be putting up with it when he does it to his friends. Remind him that people will not tolerate it and they will fall out with him (as they did today) tell him in no uncertain terms that it was his fault and he really needs to think about the way he speaks to people.

Also show him good examples of what he can say to people, do role play with him where you give him a good thing he can say like " oh yes that's good isn't it!" Or "yes I really like dinosaurs too" or whatever. Then get him to practice. Really praise him when he's being kind and speaking nicely to you/others and reinforce the behaviour.

One of my friends little boys was like this. All of his friends stoped playing with him and they got called into the head teachers as mums had complained about him and that seemed to stop it immediately. I know it’s not ideal but sometime seeing that other people won’t tolerate the behaviour is what they need

I always told my children that nobody likes a know-it-all! Tell him he'll end up with no friends at all if he carries on like this. He will learn that his actions have consequences!