I hate you / You don't love me

[maggiethemoo]

My 4 (nearly 5) yr old middle child has taken to telling me that I don't love her and hate her as I am always angry with her. She is in first year of school. I very rarely raise my voice but when she says this she is shouting. One minute she can be loving and then next we are off on this line. Often I have to ask her to hurry things up a little as we will never get through the day at her pace.

Any suggestions as this going on every day when she is with me is doing my head in.

She's probably feeling a little insecure and it is her way of asking you to tell her that you do love her.

My DD does this from time to time and I find that we need to have a couple of weeks of 'love ins' for her to work it out of her system.

I try to ignore the actual scenes to avoid reinforcing the behaviour. But then when she is calm and we're doing other things to keep telling her how wonderful she is and how much I love her!

A light touch is needed I think

My dd (5 and a bit) is going through a phase of this at the moment. Usually directed at her brother, but sometimes at me too. I just ignore it, or say that's not a nice thing to say. I think it comes when she is tired, and is generally a reaction to school being quite hard work. Doesn't seem to mean very much, and she is also very loving. I'm sure it will go away in a little while (probably only to reappear later, but there you go)