How do you deal with rudeness from a 4yo?

[virgomama]

My 4.5 yo dd is going through a very sassy stage. If you try to redirect or talk to her about an unacceptable behavior, she will do the whole hands-on-hips thing, or literally turn around and walk away. Sometimes she will start to laugh at me, or will make some sort of loud huffing noise to interrupt me. It is infuriating, but I stay calm and generally ask her to go to her room until she can be respectful. Nothing seems to be working. Time-outs don't faze her, removing priveleges doesn't seem to help, and my frustration is mounting.

The other issue is where the behaviors are coming from. We don't have cable, watch very few movies, and her older brother doesn't act like this. WE don't act like this! I guess it could come from other kids at pre-K, but I have a hard time believing that the teachers would tolerate this behavior. I'm at my wit's end and would appreciate any advice. TIA!

[mom2grrls]

Use as few words as possible Get down on her level, touch her and talk. it is a stage and will pass. If you feel too angry tell her you need to take a break and resume in 5 minutes.

[momma_unlimited]

I have found it to be very effective to create lots of awareness of exactly what my child looks/sounds like when being sassy or rude. For instance, I'll say "When you roll your eyes like this (and then I imitate it) I feel offended because I think you are trying to tell me with your body language what I have to say is worthless..." or something like that (tone of voice, etc). Then I ask my child to try saying that again in a way that sasy what she wants to say without hurting feelings/creating resentment or offense... and I explain that this will help HIM in life because learning how to talk to people so they will want to listen will increase the happiness in his relationships. He is 4 and seems to understand it all very well, and it definately lessens the rudeness.

[ani'smommy]

I have made very similar posts about my 4.5 year old. Today we were at the mall, and DD was holding DS's hand. (She's 4, he just turned 2). He said something she didn't like and she started jerking his arm, pretty hard. I picked him up, walked to the car (we were in the parking lot) buckled them in, and then tried to talk to DD about it.

She put her fingers in her ears and would not listen to a thing I said. I said, "if you can't take your fingers out of your ears, you are going to have to go right to your room when we get home." She ignored me.

And then she screamed the whole way home about how she didn't want to go to her room. I told her "if you are going to hurt people with your hands and your actions, you may not be around us. We don't like to be hurt." She was mad, but she went to her room.

After about 10 minutes I went to get her and she was AWESOME for the rest of the afternoon.

I am a time-out convert.

I tried to do all logical consequences, but for rudeness, she doesn't care about the consequence, because it is the goal. If she is rude to me and offends me, then the consequence is that I get mad. And half the time that is the whole point.

She also doesn't understand how dangerous it can be to pull a young child's arm so hard (I was worried about nurse-maid's elbow). And besides, she was *trying* to hurt him.

Anyway. Don't mean to take over your thread, and maybe a time-out wouldn't work for your kiddo, but it worked great for me. She played in her room, I didn't make her sit with her face to the corner or anything, got control of herself, learned that if you're rude and hurt people, you may not be around them.

[Sunflower223]

no advice virgo mom except that I am having the same problem with dd. ani's mommy just described my day to day life with dd (4) and ds (2). I do give in to time outs though I don't know how effective they are. Seeing this makes me hope that it is just a developmental phase. I am trying to learn to control my temper with her and give her more attention so maybe she will act out less. I am just so glad I am not alone with the bad attitude 4 year old. I'm actually having a little bit of a meltdown myself today because of something an adult said about my child's behavior yesterday and my parenting skills because I don't beat her. - That's another post though. Actually that's the main reason why I am here today, looking for advice on the same subject.

[LynnS6]

"That sounded rude. Please say it politely." "I hear that you really don't want to stop what you're doing and get ready to go. Your voice is sounding rude. Please take a deep breath and try again."

As a child, I was often told I was rude/sassy when I was, in fact, just feeling very strongly about this. I have very distinct memories of having my very valid (in my eyes) points ignored because of my tone of voice. As a result, I separate out content from tone as much as possible. Sometimes my kids can't fix the tone until I've acknowledged their feelings. Sometimes they just aren't monitoring their tone.

4-5 year olds, developmentally, are learning the power of words. As a result, they overuse that 'power' a lot. This is the age of threats and wild declarations, such as "you can't come to my birthday party ever again!" Things like tone are very hard to control, especially if you're feeling emotional (which apparently 5 year olds do all the time).

So, if I had to summarize my tome into a sentence it would be: Acknowledge the meaning, then work on the tone.

[virgomama]

I so appreciate all your thoughtful responses. I do try very hard to look beneath the behavior to find out what she is trying to tell me. It's crazy, but I'm still shocked to see such sophisticated behaviors coming out of such a little body, so sometimes I'm really taken aback by that and take it too personally. I try to believe that this is a phase, but with my dd, it seems that each new phase is just another way she experiments with/expresses her strongly independent nature. If it's not this phase, it will be another one!

[rabbitmum]

Originally Posted by LynnS6

"That sounded rude. Please say it politely." "I hear that you really don't want to stop what you're doing and get ready to go. Your voice is sounding rude. Please take a deep breath and try again."

As a child, I was often told I was rude/sassy when I was, in fact, just feeling very strongly about this. I have very distinct memories of having my very valid (in my eyes) points ignored because of my tone of voice. As a result, I separate out content from tone as much as possible. Sometimes my kids can't fix the tone until I've acknowledged their feelings. Sometimes they just aren't monitoring their tone.

4-5 year olds, developmentally, are learning the power of words. As a result, they overuse that 'power' a lot. This is the age of threats and wild declarations, such as "you can't come to my birthday party ever again!" Things like tone are very hard to control, especially if you're feeling emotional (which apparently 5 year olds do all the time).

So, if I had to summarize my tome into a sentence it would be: Acknowledge the meaning, then work on the tone.

Great advice which I will try to remember and live by!