3 year old- help me please

[flowerandrandd]

Hi I have two dds 4 and 3, they are absolute gems at nursery and school but at home- omg.

At the moment they are vindicating at every single opportunity, for example 'no mommy i want daddy to put me to bed/wash my hair/dry my hair/hold my hand/help me finish my dinner because i am too lazy/read my book/put me in my car seat etc I could go on.

Not forgetting my 3 year old telling me she 'hates' me at every opportunity. It is a phrase never used in our house but since they are close in ages and since they have started mainstream education they have been coming home with a number of corkers like'hate/idiot etc'

Up until now I have tried the more explanative route, of explaining why these words/behaviours aren't nice etc but I have resorted t bedroom punishment for 3 and 4 minutes a time bit like the naughty step but as our stairs are in the lounge keeping them on it is near impossible.

My eldest has changed literally over night being golden bar the odd slip, but my 3 year old is so difiant- when i put her in her room i tell her why i am doing it and that it is not acceptable and that is why she is going to sit on her bed to think about it. I go in after 3 minutes and ask her to tell me why she is sitting on her bed which she generally refuses and then follows by saying she hates me!

I am at my wits end, she is very controlling and my eldest jumps on the bandwagon which is understandable because i suppose she sees her younger sister getting the attention...

She is also a child that can not be left to 'kick it out' she could go for hours, we have tried it before, to the point where she did it in a local shop and i stood my ground- 3.5 hours she screamed for, thankfully i knew the shop keeper who brought me a cup of tea and didn't mind the comotion!

advice would be greatly appreciated x

plus daddy is on board by the way he is happy to discipline but just think they hate me!

They don't hate you - I'm sure they know that.

My ds is 3 and had the "I want mummy or daddy" to do it phase.
Sometimes we indulged him if he seemed genuinely upset - I also saw it as a sign that I wasn't giving him enough nice attention (true as we have a baby too). Other times we said no - it depended really.

I would stop the time out thing in the bedroom. You can introduce time outs properly - give two warnings. Third time, they go into timeout. Tell her why and keep it short and sweet. Then stand with her but not engaging until it's done (that's what you do if she keeps escaping). Then once done ask her why she was in timeout then if she doesn't say then tell her (short and sweet) and tell her what she should do next time.

Be positive - praise both your DDs for specific things they've done well. Not "you're a good girl" as that's general and they won't know why or how to do it again. Say "that's good sitting/listening.

Don't compare the two of them either. Stay away from "oh your sister does it nicely why don't you" or anything like that. It'll only breed resentment.

I wouldn't have let her kick it off for that long in a shop - what purpose did it serve and did it stop it happening again? Can you have a think about why she kicks off in the first place? My ds is a monster when tired ill or hungry so if I know he's tired (eg no nap), hungry etc then I will be a bit more lenient. I get more results if I tell him what to do and let him take things at his pace sometimes. Eg if I want him to get dressed, I'll ask him. He might mess about so I pointedly ignore him saying "I'm waiting for you to put your jumper on" and he'll get on with it after a minute or two. Then I give him a big cuddle and tell him he got dressed very well. If I try and force him or tell him off for messing about then it takes an age. It's hard though when I'm losing patience but it keeps the atmosphere lighter.

I can't give that much advice because I've just posted about my problem 3 year old too but all I can say is that I have found that positive praise in the form of a reward chart (you can buy them but I just make them) has worked far better than the naughty step/bedroom etc. I just save the step for extreme naughtiness.
DS also has a reward jar, when he does something good he gets a stone in the jar but when he does something bad a stone comes out. When he gets an agreed amount of stones then he gets to pick a treat.
It has really helped but he's still not 'perfect'...but are they ever?