My 4 year old is going through a very stubborn/border pushing/tantrum phase, and gets tired very easily at the moment as well.
She sometimes hits me or throws stuff at me, but I tend to brush it off - well she'll get the time out step unless it's obvious that's she's extremely tired or she's in the middle of a full blown tantrum. However she's just slapped me full on in the face, twice, in front of her school friend's parents, then spat at me whilst I hawled her home, and I'm mortified. Basically I agreed to let her play on the swings at the end of the road for 5 minutes, took her down there, but instead she barged into a neighbour's garden where some schoolfriends were playing. When their parents started to take them off to bed about 5 minutes later, I picked her up in my arms to take her home too, and this is when it all kicked off.
My sister's children hit each other all the time - they're like a miniature version of the 3 stooges - and although we don't see them that regularly, I'm sure this is partly where it's coming from. However, I also worry that perhaps I'm not hard enough, or perhaps I'm too strict.
I'm just not sure how to address this. She'll apologise when she's calmed down, but it's obvious that she's too young to really mean it. I'm thinking of having to resort to grounding her the forseeable future, but ideally I want her to understand that it's just not acceptable to hit and spit at people without having to cutting off her contact with kids of her own age outside of school. I also want her to understand that it's not acceptable to just invite yourself into other people's houses and gardens.
We have a sticker chart, which is gradually working for issues like going to the loo properly, which I've now added "not throwing and hitting" to. I've explained that she needs to improve her behaviour by Friday or she'll not be going to a party of a classmate.