How do you punish/deal with blatant defiance?

[unicorn]

My 6 year old dd sometimes just stares me hard in the face and says 'NO!'.. I'm not going to do x,y,or z - it makes me feel and really rather useless.

How do YOU deal with such an attitude?

What about that thing they did on that TV programme with the money (could I be more vague, I wonder?)
We do a variation on it. Instead of pocket money at the end of the week, allocate 20 1p's (or whatever you want) to her each day. Each time she's naughty, take one awy - no if's or but's. The money she has at the end of the week is her pocket money.
My DS is so like your desription of your DD's emotional state it's uncanny, so I really sympathise.

Unicorn this may be a red herring, but is your dd also a non-sleeper? Mine needs so little sleep it drives me insane. People try to calm me with reassurances that "Maggie Thatcher only needed four hours sleep a night" - which, as you can probably imagine, is enough to make me want to tie a noose around my own neck. Just wondering if there was a connection between the two things.

Jan, she has always been a 'difficult' sleeper...ie takes a longtime to go to sleep (can't relax very easily)and when she does sleep it is very light (easily disturbed)..
She often wakes up in a bad temper (much like her mother!!!)

A'Type A' personality, springs to mind.

Trefusis, what a great idea, why not try and get them published?

trefusis, great idea. Love to know how it goes.

trefusis, have you tried it yet? Did it work?

I tried your idea on ds this afternoon and it was brilliant, really it was. He pored over the stories, we talked about "the place where the story could either go down the sad track or the happy one" (and who had the power to make it go down whichever); then we ceremonially threw away the "sad" story.

(It was all about whether at the end of term you (a) say "thank you and have a lovely summer" to your teacher; or (b) demand why a classmate has been given a little leaving present but you haven't.)