What are you best parenting 'hacks' for dealing with preschoolers?

[milkyman]

My four year old ds is really difficult at the mo. Any tips/suggestions?

To get him up to bed we pretend to be animals and have a race!

Glad it's not just us....

Ds is going through a very difficult phase and is particularly stubborn. Can't be coerced into anything

Nothing helpful to add, just here for the tips...

My 4yo gets out of bed, has a wee and brushes her teeth, we wash her face and get her uniform on upstairs, then we go down and just before/after breakfast we do her hair so that after breakfast she has half an hour or so to play. That makes school mornings easier. While DD is playing, I then get younger DD dressed after breakfast.

It's not really a hack as such but follow Andrea Nair on facebook. She's the best with four year olds, IME.

it's really bad and i'll prob live to regret it, but my ds1 is 3.5yr and very competitive, if he's playing up, i tell him i'll beat him at what ever it is i want him todo. Brushing teeth: i can do it better and faster, getting dressed, getting to car, sorting breakfast, tidying up, hoovering, dusting....yes i make him clean up after himself (he doesn't do it very well and his toy hoover is crap) but i want to start good habits early and he earns good boy points which he can spend on stuff.

failing that, i threaten to take away good boy points, always does the trick.

i never keep track of the points as to be fair he is normally always good and only had to take points away once

Like a pp I turn everything into a competition. I can brush more teeth than you, I bet I can put more toys away than you etc and then loads of praise when they do well. This works equally well with my 2 year old and my 5 year old. It doesn't work at all any more with my 8 year old though!