Stroppy - rude! - four year old! Techniques needed...

[hollingbury]

My 4 year old son is fairly constantly stroppy. He resists everything he doesn't want to do with a real wilfulness and is often quite rude when in this mood.

I hate it - it makes me cross. We have tried lots of things but feel like nothing has worked. I'm hoping he's in an age appropriate phase but I want to handle it better.

He's very bright and spirited and I don't want to crush that.

Any parents of similar kids - techniques or suggestions?

Thanks

Some experience from similarly aged son and husband at times

No great solutions to the root of the problem but I find changing tempo completely and for example starting to be really silly or joke to cajool him into doing what I want often helps. For example, yesterday we needed to put shoes on to go out. Conversation started with basic "Can you put your shoes on please" and quickly descended into him shouting about how he didn't want to and how he didn't want to go out which given it was Christmas Day and the house was full of toys and chocolate wasn't really unexpected. So, I picked up his shoes and started them talking to each other about how they were missing his feet and were going to find them to give them a cuddle, and then acted them trying to 'cuddle' daddy's feet, grandma's feet etc... by which point he was sitting down nicely yelling 'no mys feet! mys feet here!' which reminds me we need to work on his grammar

Hope it gets better for you soon.