Everything becomes a debate.....

[ShadowOfTheDay]

Sometimes I wish we had not raised DD13 to be such a questioning, debating, confident and erudite individual......

EVERYTHING we say no to has now become a debate.... EVERYTHING.....

I'm running out of ideas and said the dreaded "BECAUSE I SAID SO" the other day when she asked if she could listen to music on the ipad before school.....

How does everyone else handle the kind-of-reasonable-but-you-know-it-could-turn-bad-if-you-say-yes requests.....

as in - I know she would like to listen to music before school - BUT she gets lazy and will tell me she is ready/has her books/has sorted PE kit/has eaten breakfast - just to get what she wants.... and if she has started listening to one when it is time to go she will get all arsey....

so I say no.... then we get the "WHY?" "It is no hassle to YOU if I listen to music, you don't want me to, so you are saying no just to control me and make feel bad, I've done all that stuff and I WILL stop when you say" etc,etc,etc,etc ad infinitum....

soooooooo draining... any strategies???

Let her do it once. If its goes okay it's no problem. If it goes tits up, tomorrow you can say ' I refer you to yesterday morning' when she asks why she can't do it.

I just say "It's not up for debate; I said no." And stick to it.
There might be a minor flounce or eyeball roll, but I pretend I haven't seen them (pick my battles).
And I make sure I'm nice to them later on if they've accepted something with minimum fuss.
It works for us, just about. At least, they've got to 17.5 and 15.5 without us killing them yet.

Only the other day I turned to my DD14 and said, "I can see you're getting to the age where you want to query all sorts of things and push boundaries etc and find some independence. I'm glad you're growing up into a kind, generous, thoughtful and independent woman and I'm very proud of you. I don't want this to turn into a period in our lives where we battle constantly and stop being so happy together, so perhaps we should both think carefully before we leap into a disagreement and consider if this is really the path we want to go down" (or something along those lines)...

It seems to have done the trick.

Ooh - it's so easy to get drawn into one of their arguments debates.

Just say 'I'm not arguing' we've discussed this before and walk away. Easier said than done.

YY to clam's advice.

This confirms my suspicion that my 8 year old may in fact be 15.

Everything is a debate and Q&A session. If it doesn't get better in the teenage years I'm sending me to boarding school.

I use the "it was not an invitation to debate, it was an actual instruction" on my teenagers

I also gave ds1 the death glare last night whilst he was about to start discussing the fact he had to clean the kitchen before he went to bed and told him to pick his battles wisely.

Can you do her a list of stuff to get done in the morning and she can listen to the ipad when those things are done? If she lies about getting things done, and you find out,or doesn't log off promptly when it's time to leave, she loses a day's ipad.

Mine's 4 so feel free to tell me I don't know what I'm on about, but I'd give her a chance to prove that she can be responsible and get the ipad as a reward.

Thanks all - some great advice, now just need to put it in practice!! I really like the "it was not an invitation to debate, it was an actual instruction"... it is just the sort of thing SHE would say, so may work on her....