8 year old dd causing me a headache!

[BearyClairy]

Please reassure me.

My daughter, who is 8, can be the most delightful child. She is polite, doing well at school, well behaved. I am lucky to have her. She is an only child.

However, some of the time she freezes me out when I try and impose discipline or say no. She turns into a total b! She looks at me like she hates me, she says nasty things, she goes to her father for hugs and love, she ducks my affections, and she answers back. Her father backs me up most of the time.

A friend of my husband's has an older daughter. She says that her daughter was the same aged 8, and I should ignore the bad behaviour. But I worry our relationship is suffering. Please reassure me!

my daughter who will be 9 next week, can be like this.

Its horrible as most of the time shes lovely, but if shes in bad mood or asked to do something when shes 'busy' or just doesn't want to, results in screaming and shouting and really awful behaviour.

I try and ignore her, but will resort to time out for her to calm down, telling her that her behaviour is not acceptable and until she can say sorry then shes not getting the ipad/tv/sweets etc.

I'm sure that we aren't the only ones dealing with this.

Thanks for your reply! I might have to sit this one out until adolescence. Oh, wait...

It's not easy, but maybe try and discipline in a 'positive' way, suggesting what TO DO rather than what NOT to do.

And if you are very clever, and can anticipate situations and possible outcomes, you may hardly need to discipline at all. So, give a 15 minute warning before bedtime, or before she needs to tidy up, or whatever.

haha yes I was thinking about the teenage years and how its not likely to get better anytime soon.

I try the positive encouragement route and say things like I'd love to see one of your beautiful pictures, to encourage her off of the ipad, or I bet you can't beat me to the post box/corner shop etc.

It doesn't always work and sometimes I cringe at what I hear myself saying in public and dread coming on mumsnet to find a thread about my loud parenting or cringeworthy talking to dd. But I figure its better than letting the monster rear its head and ruining our day.

We set a timer for screen time now, anything over an hour and is like shes grown three heads, she turns into an irritable angry thing. I also do the countdown to bath time, bed time etc.

Currently having issues with mornings, getting up is fine, but getting washed dressed and eating breakfast is a battle. So no tv before breakfast, teeth and getting dressed, then she can watch tv while I put her hair up, and then sit down to watch it until time o go to school, however every morning we have the battle over not switching the tv on, until she has one everything. I'm not backing down though, as asoon as the tv goes on, she stops. (have had to hide the ipads until after school as well otherwise she goes and hides with one instead of the tv)