Advice please on how to deal with this issue with my 5 year old

[BarbaraVineFan]

My DD is 5 and is a pretty confident child. She is usually very well -behaved but I have recently started experiencing a specific issue and not sure how to deal with it.

I'll give an example - this evening DD was feeding the cat (one of her jobs) and I noticed that she was lifting the bowl up over his head and then putting it down, lifting it and then putting it down rather than just giving him the food. So I said 'don't tease him, he doesn't line it. Give him his food please.' DD replied'I'm not teasing him, I just like him looking up at me ' to which I said.'You might like it DD, but he doesn't like it, so you shouldn't do it.'

Here is my issue - she then just said 'yes he does like it' and I said 'no he doesn't' and she said 'yes he does' etc. Eventually I just left it, but I'm not sure how to deal with this? Is there something else I could be doing or saying to prevent this back and forth argument?

Put her on the naughty corner. She does something wrong, tell her off properly.

We don't have a 'naughty corner' :/

Also, she did stop when I asked her. She wasn't carrying on the behaviour, just talking about it

You warn her and start counting her from 1-3.
So “Do as I say right now or I will take it from you” then if she doesn’t you start counting, by three you intervene.

Thanks but I expressed the first post badly. I do deal like that with any bad behaviour which continues after a warning.

This is more about the debate. She does as she's told and stops doing whatever it is but she then continues debating it. How do I shut down the debate?

She sounds pretty capable if she's feeding the cat at 5. At that age, I'd take the time to explain why the cat doesn't like it and say what the cat could do if she continued. Then I'd ask her if scratching her face sounded like a nice activity?

I do this with my boy who is also 5 and he understands the why. They appreciate it. They just don't know.

In that scenario I would ask why do you think that? Or ‘would you like it if I did that with your dinner?’ And then if they kept insisting yes I’d say well I wouldn’t like it if you did it to me, not everyone feels the same. It probably wouldn’t make a difference in the immediate situation but I’m hoping to encourage empathy in future.

I just ignore.

Say I'm not going over this. He doesn't like it (or whatever the case may be)

I used to pull my rank "Because Mum said so". Still works even though my boys are 16 and 14. Saying this, some things are best to ignore

Yes, ignore. No back and forth.

She sounds bright and reminds me of my own sassy 6 year old. Obviously stop the behaviour quickly as you have done but in terms of not getting stuck in a pointless opposition....I would actually open up the conversation a bit and take her through your reasoning to develop her empathy - that might be pointing out the physical cues the cat is giving (wagging tail) which suggest its unhappy and/or asking your daughter about how she would feel about someone not giving her food to her when she is hungry. Maybe explaining that you wouldn't let anyone treat her that way either.

She sounds like a clever girl so give her something to think about.

I would probably end with something along the lines of - we cannot know exactly what the cat thinks or feels but these are the reasons why I suspect she will not like it and I have decided that it isn't kind or fair to treat her in a way that will make her upset. Then move on.