I am so sad, I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like a prisoner in my own home. Since DD started kindy her behaviour has got worse and worse. It seems nothing works. She's always been stubborn, is quite clever but usually considerate. It's always been a bit of a tackle to get her to do anything but these days no consequence seems to matter. We have ALWAYS followed through when we have said that xyz will happen if she makes us count to 3. NOTHING gets done unless I get to 3 then it's a mad rush...sometimes. Other times I have to take away the toy she was playing with or give some other consequence dependent on the situation.

As you know, the sleep has been a big issue and I don't believe this is helping too but isn't the crux of the issue either. The star chart worked 2 nights then we got the same old up-and-down-open-curtains-yelling behaviour and she kept saying "one more chance", um, no, not after having to deal with it all 4 times. So tonight after trying the chart again for a new week (she gets 7 stars then a prize she's chosen if the whole 7 nights are full), she is up and down again and I follow through with the black polythene over the outside of her windows and I tie her door shut (to mine so it doesn't open). No amount of talking to her and empathising or explaining helps her to do the things which ultimately benefit her.

Sleep aside, I am increasingly concerned by the malicious talk. Apart from the "I hate you mummy and daddy I'm going to live with xyz" stuff, out of the blue (with no provocation) today I get "mummy I hope you get really sick, sicker than you are". Quite normal and calculated like. I have a light cold at present. I asked her why and she just says "because I want you too". I told her it wasn't nice and she wouldn't like it if I said I hoped she got sicker and she agreed but said "I still hope you get really sick". So I told her she could go spend some time alone away from me if she couldn't be nice and could come out when she was ready to be nicer and liked being out with the family. She didn't care and it was only til I "locked" the door that she starts going "I don't hope you get sick, I love you". Grr.

She often does deliberate stuff she knows is wrong knowing full well it's time out afterward but she smiles doing it, smiles through the "off to your room stuff" and then thrashes the door (literally, she picks up hard stuff and throws it hard against the door). She doesn't care that I tell her her pocket money will be used to pay for damage. Talking to her about her behaviour isn't helping. She just walks off or says "yup" then goes straight back and does it again.

She gets a lot of one on one time with us these days (she always got some but life was stressful last year up until the last few months). Even doing something nice with her, she will do something completely stupid while we're having a nice time, to push my buttons. She tells me she likes to do stuff that annoys me and she wants to hurt me. I get up and walk away but she doesn't seem to care.

My Mum has noticed she's getting quite hard to control and is behaving quite "dizzy" and silly at her place (she goes there for 1/2 day a week most weeks). Mum is finding her hard to deal with as she's started to also push her buttons. She has also just started to speak back to other adults. "Your guys are boring" or sometimes she'll just ignore when they have asked her to stop doing something.

I'm worried.

I think its really hard to say without seeing her in action, if you kwim, but some of it is certainly normal. I think kids do say really horrible things to see if they will get a reaction, and what will it be if they do etc.

I can assure you that dizzy and silly is pretty normal for this age (after having been with dd and her friend at friend's house this afternoon running around pulling their skirts over their heads... )

Dd will call me names like 'stupid bum bum poo poo' etc. To which, honestly, I just roll my eyes and ignore.

I just googled 'malicious 5 year olds' (or something along those lines) and got LOOOOTS of hits...too many too post links, so I'd suggest that you try it too, and you might find some reassurance in it.

Yup. Normal. My kids do this, and its so freakin' frustrating.... because you don't understand WHY they are trying to ruin a nice time with them... so yeah, happens a lot.

I could be totally barking up the wrong tree, but I get the impression that you are an 'explainer' (I am too..) but maybe you just need to back off a bit, for want of a better term.

So, for example, when she comes out with 'I hope you get sick and die' (or something equally nasty ) just keep calm and say 'Oh, I'm disappointed to hear you talk that way' and just carry on with what you're doing.

It couldn't hurt to try... that way you've expressed that you don't like the way she is talking, but she ain't gonna get a rise out of you, so its not really worth it.



My 8yo will do this. All of it. He will storm off to his room in a sulk, and throw things at the door. We have chips out of the door because of this. But he is otherwise very mild manner, so I think its partly because he doesn't demand the positive attention like his older brother does, so he tries to get attention in negative ways....and follows that through with things being thrown at the door while in time out....

Anyway....just a couple of other random thoughts...

My just turned 5 year old can be very malicious at times too and I find the only thing that really works with him is to ignore ignore ignore. It is so hard to do but I refuse to give him any reactions to anything and will take myself away from him at times.
He absolutely hates it and will scream etc for ages, throw heavy objects at the door etc when I do it but will eventually calm himself down and apologise. Of course he often says when we talk about it after that he will do it/say it again which really rips at my heart but again all I have found I can do is ignore ignore ignore as I know deep down as I'm sure you do with your girl that he is a lovely kid.

My thoughts would be that you have tried reasoning/talking etc until you are blue in the face and for some reason she knows she can still get away with it so to speak.
Next time she acts this way could you ignore her for as long as it takes, a whole day if you have to with no speaking or eye contact until she apologises or improves her behaviour dramatically.
I know how sad my sons behaviour makes me feel at times so I really empathise with you and wish you all the best.

oh i always found ignoring or a random nonsense come back to their nicely calculated take down lines worked quite well.
'mummy i hate you', 'ok thats nice, do you know what i hate, I HATE duck poo and spaghetti'.
honestly they can say really really mean crap at that age, goodness knows why, i found trying to reason, make them see sense, or outright punish was futile....so i just took to turning it around and not really paying any attention to what they've said. i.e you have a biiig bubble around you ...nasty crap bounces offfff the bubble you are zen like all cool calm and collected
DS#1 was a shocker at that age, and now he's really rather lovely (lol i thought id lost him for good for a while there- found myself not really likeing him for a wee while, which made dealing with him hard)

have you tryd lying in with her to get her to sleep (aka until she is literally asleep? - giving her a backscratch....absolutely getting her shattered b4 bed?
id say sleep is prob more to blame than you give it credit - it totally alters their personality.

oh and yes the smile through everything like its a joke - it used to reallly get under my skin when you've bn telling them off then you see them trying not to giggle about it - arrrgh.
once you find the currency that really matters to that child you've hit gold...its just finding out what works for them and doesn't.
thankfully my #2 isn't like it at all lol he's almost like my finding closure child

Could it be that she's just be ready for school? Hopefully once she's at school her behavior will settle down.

OMG! I am relieved to hear that other parents are going through it too! My DD (was 5 in Nov) is pretty much the same as yours AP!! Very tiring, frustrating and heartbreaking too at times! It is so hard to ignore them but am starting to find that is what works... along with time out being locked outside as my DD just hates that as she can't stand missing out on what's happening if we are inside and she isn't!

Unfortunately, it was when she started school that it seemed to become worse so am guessing some of her "nasty" words were picked up from school already!

Urgh. I could have written that 18 months - 2 years ago. My DD at 5.5 - 6 years old was rotten to me. She was really mean and hurtful and tried her best to single me out and exclude me from the family. It was rough, really rough. DH took over the discipline when he was home and he had zero tolerance for any rudeness or disrespect aimed at me and I think that was important.

I'm happy to say that we're out of that phase and she's a lovely, caring, and very compassionate 7 year old. This too shall pass.

OK, I really don't have anything particularly helpful to add - having not been there. But I just wanted to say that I don't think it is 'normal behaviour'.

Just thought I'd comment to give a little bit of balance to the topic.

Good luck.

I should quantify my post by saying that DD has always had pretty extreme behaviours plus she's gifted and has anxiety issues. She's never been your "normal" kid. I'm not sure if it's a normal phase or not but I do know of lots of people who have had 5 - 6 year old girls going through an "I hate mum" phase.

When I was dealing with terrible behaviour from the boys at around age 4yrs old I was at my wits end, star charts, rewards, praise etc did nothing to stop the bad stuff. In the end DH and I took every toy in the house away, we left them with their bikes, a ball, a hula hoop, and a teddy each, we told them their behaviour had been so bad that they didn't deserve their toys and they would have to earn them back.

It was amazing, an almost instant turnaround. They began playing together and cooperating, going on 'adventures', spending hours outside and were generally much nicer kids to be around. It was a good few months before we started returning a few toys to them, was over a year before we gave everything back. Every now and again we give them the threat about removing toys and it seems to snap them into better behaviour again.

Hope that helps, good luck

Tbanks so much for all the replies and support, I really appreciate it and feel quite a bit better about it all now. I think the advice about ignoring is probably really key and something I will try. It mostly seems to be the advice in parenting books too as apparently the behaviour is intended to "control" and "divide and conquer". Human behaviour, we are naturally inclined to want to control and secure our environment and kids obviously don't know healthy ways to achieve this like most adults who do. So it's counter-productive to them but then the response most adults give back to them then makes them think they need to up the ante. So ignoring is probably best for those reasons, if that makes sense, as hard as it is to want to remind them that the behaviour is rude and you're upset and they deserve a consequence.

I watched DD the other day when I babysat her friend for most of the day. Her friend was being quite rude to her (na-na-na-na-naaaa) type of behaviour ("are you STILL riding a bike with training wheels, I ride a big girls bike without them, I've never had to have baby training wheels" and "you'll hate school and your Mum can't stay and you'll be lonely and you won't be in my class so you won't have any friends".) She was really good with her and I heard her saying to her that "I can make other friends and I don't need my Mum at kindy so I won't need her at school and the teacher will be there". I also overheard her friend say "My Mum says I can't go visit my neighbour and I just go anyway cos that's what big girls do" and my DD replied with "you have to listen to your Mum". She also came and told me when her friend was telling her to do something she knew she shouldn't. So I guess she's not a criminal yet lol.

DH and I were in hysterics reading this last night and I really think we'll try this! Goes with the "not letting it show you're bothered" thing. Thanks for this tip, it's really good! I think you're right too Cadium about the sleep thing. I sat down with her to do some maths stuff yesterday which she's normally really fast at and she just couldn't concentrate. With the polythene up on her window she slept well last night (door stays open if she says in bed). She's allowed to start the star chart again if she can do this for 3 consecutive nights (to break the back of it).

This is what friends with older kids say (esp girls), they reckon being the eldest at kindy does nothing for the attitude and being the littlest again works wonders. But I have heard that the opp can happen as they are really tired and picking up more bad behaviour from other kids. I hope we get a positive change!

I'm so glad to hear it's working!

That's so good to hear that she's good now! We spoke about this post last night and DH wondered if saying "don't talk to my wife like that" (and vice versa) might help her to realise that we stick together as parents and trying to get in between us won't work. I saw tat on Dr.Phil years and yrs ago as advice for similar, it's easy to forget that you have to be a united front as parents.

Callog, we have done that before too. However I wonder if the toy issue may be important in that the more they have, the more they seem to get in to a chaotic state of mind and misbehave (from my experience). I DO agree with you that I find DD easier to deal with if she only has a few things out to play with (like pens and paper, a few soft toys, outdoorsy stuff etc). I just wish we had a yard for her to play outside instead of the busy driveway (our yard is piles of dirt and weeds with nails and stones in from our house build and it's going nowhere fast)! I think I will take some of the presents away for a bit and rotate stuff more (she's just had Xmas and a birthday so we are bursting at the seams)!

That's what DH did. He'd say "Don't speak to my wife like that. I love mum and when you're mean to her it upsets me" - because she was a total daddy's girl - daddy was a super hero and mum was the villain.

I tried ignoring it but some of it was so hateful and horrible that we felt it needed to be jumped on straight away. DH was great with that. Even now if she gets attitude in her voice with me DH speaks up for me.

The biggest change with DD in the last 2 years is that she feels empathy much more. I felt like she didn't care if I was upset at all when she was younger. Now if she's done something wrong or has behaved badly and I speak to her about it, she'll get tears in her eyes and offer a really sincere apology. It's been a breakthrough for our relationship actually! So some of it may be a maturity thing too. DD is really brainy but some of her social skills have been late to develop.

Pudding, I have read that kids don't develop empathy properly until they are 7yrs so you're right, it's about teaching it over and over til it develops and the penny drops.

To be honest Astro Pie I wouldn't be encouraging this friendship.

Whilst it is true that our children will come across nasty/naughty people (or people with different values/morals) in their lives, I don't think they need to be subjected to them as preschoolers.

I think the downside to socialisation is that 'good children' are socialising with 'bad children' when they do not have the maturity or knowledge to understand right from wrong/good from bad (as per the family values/morals).

I think we (as parents) have the right (and should) 'select' who our children interact with for as long as possible (which is probably school age). In the hope that our children WILL have the values/morals of our family firmly cemented BEFORE they have to interact with nasty/bad/naughty children.

Otherwise we are leaving a lot to chance ... will the child listen/role model their parents or Bob (the swearing, disruptive, disobedient, cool kid at kindy)?

JMO.

I encouraged this friendship when the girls lived next door to each other, they got on very well and her friend was very mild mannered, polite, caring and lovely to be around. I also became quite close to her Mum and she's one of my best friends now. Her DD changed when she started school - completely. The girls are going to go to the same school but not the same class. Most of the attitude has come about from a "I'm a big school girl" thing as her Mum warned me once when we were going to get together that her DD had made mention prior to it that she didn't want to play with "babies" now she was a school kid. There's 5 months between them lol! Her family are kind, caring ppl and share a lot of the same values as us. I think children change and grow if they are socialised, so whilst I understand and agree with your pov, None, I don't feel I can completely keep her away from other kids I don't deem appropriate as her parents are very much like us, iykwim? I am sending her to an out of zone school as I wanted to get her away from another child she's besties with who's Mum I see in a wider social circle (and would feel uncomfortable with my child being alone with at their place later on). I haven't made much of an effort to have catch up's with my friend when I know her DD will be there (with mine) for the reasons you mention though, so I do get what you're saying and agree. Certainly if I had concerns there was going to be a major friendship there I would have to rethink the friendship if the behaviour didn't improve as a natural progression of growing up and maturing. Her Mum has been quite stressed recently and her DD's behaviour has reflected that I reckon.

Oh Gosh, my 8 year old seem to lose all his empathy at age 7. I've found my boys lovely around 5 and 6 and ds1 became a horrible thing when he was 7. Really hope ds2 doesn't follow the same path.

I was at my wits end with DD1 close to the same time as you are with C.
I just decided it was time to be blunt. The things that were unacceptable to me, there was no "ask, tell, act" it was action. I just felt like she really was trying to string me out to the last minute of how much I could deal with by giving her too many opportunities to keep going.
I wont accept back chatting, temper tantrums, rudeness, nor being destructive. It's straight to time out without exception. After time out, the behaviour is face to face talked about and resolved. If there is no resolution then there is more time out, if there is resolution there is a big hug with reassurance of love (got to parent with love).
DD1 now knows it's the hugest no no ever to call me any name rudely, she would never dream of calling me anything. I know I should ignore it like most people do, but for some reason it's on my non negotiable list.

I still do use "ask, tell, act" but for things that are not going to send me into a crumble. Like forgetting to put the milk away or not picking up toys. It's not the end of the world if a five year old doesn't clean up after themself, I mean they are five, you make allowances and tackle it from another angle.
If I did use the ATA and got a non negotiable behaviour then thats when she gets in trouble, it's not about what she has not done, but the bad behaviour that is being made an example of.

In saying all of that, you need to find her currency.
I actually really like Callog's suggestion of removing a majority of her toys. It does sound to me like she thinks that she is the boss or at least up there on par with you and that's not right because you're the parent, you get to make the decisions. She's far too young to be the boss at five.