4yr old Year R attitude

[Lights22]

My daughter is "experimenting" being a grown up, maybe even a teacher. Telling me off, talking back, correcting me. All inappropriately (by this I mean if I make a mistake I allow her to correct me as I would her, and I apologise for mistakes, as does she. We have a mutually respectful relationship usually). For example someone bumped into me when out shopping, we shared the usual apologies between people and laughed it off. Honestly there was then a 10 minute rant about me being rude for letting the other woman bump into me!!!

This is new behaviour for her and I know developmentally normal, but please could you share your hints and tips as to how to get through this phase please? I've tried various tactics such as explaining, avoiding, saying she'll be getting "thinking time" if this carries on, firm, gentle, loud, quiet. She's just relentless and it's getting wearing and I don't want to get into an endless battle for the next however many months.

Comments such as "toughen up" or "you're the parent" aren't really very helpful. I'm after constructive help and advice please. Thanks x

The long rant about you being rude I'd address in terms of the incident being over and done with, and that she wouldn't like it if you went on and on about an accident she had or mistake she made – you and the other person had both apologised, picked up anything dropped or whatever, that's it, on with our day. (I am assuming no one was doing anything daft that required an 'and that's why we shouldn't do X' aspect to the discussion.) And just keep changing the subject, 'We're done with that, do you think we should get apples or pears?', and so on.

My standard response to answering back, whinging, and similar forms of inappropriate communication is 'DD, we don't speak to each other like that. Would you like to try again?' with no response to the actual content of what they said. Repeat as necessary, which might be a lot at first, but the only way to get a different response (or reaction) is to speak nicely. If you can sound bored rather than irritated and say the exact same thing over and over again, it can help a bit.