Help please lovely MNers! We are struggling so much with our 4 year olds attitude at the moment. Me and DH feel like all we do it nag at him. He used to be such a well behaved little boy and he still is a lot of the time but we are finding so often we have to tell him and tell him to do things (take his pjs off to get ready for nursery, sit at the table for dinner, get shoes on to leave the house) and then eventually we raise our voices and he does it straight away. Then he tells us he doesn't like it when we shout (of course he doesn't, we don't either!) And he has the attitude of a teenager and talks to us awfully sometimes.
This morning seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I asked him to go to the toilet before getting dressed for nursery. I asked him 3 times. On the third time he makes a grumpy teenager moan type noise but goes to the toilet. Then I'm helping him get dressed and very calmly he tells me "I don't like you mummy. You should go away. Then we would just have daddy. I don't love you."
We had a chat about all the things I do for or with him and he says "daddy could do those". Daddy unfortunately could not do those things because he works 7-5 every day and I'm a sahm. He has said he doesn't like daddy too previously.
Later, we were in the car driving to nursery and he tells me "on my 3rd birthday, you forgot to to put (certain character that he didn't know at the time) on my birthday cake!" In a very afronted tone, like how dare I have forgotten. How/why is he bringing up a birthday cake from 14 months ago as a stick to beat me with?! He loved the cake at the time as it had the characters he wanted then on it. Where did this come from?!
I feel like I would find it easier to handle if he was having a full tantrum and saying "I hate you!" Since during tantrums, he's not in control but he says these things when he's perfectly calm.
How do we handle this attitude? He seems very ungrateful for all the wonderful things he has and experiences we give him, which we are so fortunate to be able to do and we do go without in our own lives to facilitate these things for our children. And it all seems so expected by them and he seems to be becoming entitled.
Where have we gone wrong and how do we turn it around? I'm afraid I didn't handle it well at all this morning and berated him for not appreciating what I do for him but of course he doesn't, he's a 4 year old and I chose to have children and of course I'm supposed to clean his clothes and the house and cook for them etc.
Thank you if you got this far and please be gentle, I'm feeling awful enough about this whole situation!