4.5 year old and spitting

[4Marmalade]

I did a search and found a few threads on spitting but they mostly discussed younger children (2.5 and under).

This is something my ds has started (about 3 weeks now) and it is not going over well with us. I'm not sure why we have such a harsh negative reaction but being spit at is just not OK with me and I get so angry inside when ds does this. He does it to get the reaction out of us when he is not happy with a decision or just wants to be "silly". He's even spit on dd (2 years old) and she comes out crying and we find a big wet spot on her head and ds follows laughing.

Dh yells out "that's disgusting - don't do that" (BTW, in case you were wondering...that does nothing to curb the behaviour and dh knows that and is trying to work on it but still......). I've talked to him about disrespect and how I see it as being very rude and not OK. We tried the bathroom route and one time I even joined him in spitting in the sink. But now he just screams that he's done spitting and refuses to go to the bathroom and physically getting him there doesn't work as it just ends up getting too physical for my liking.

If you've gone through this can you give me some pointers. Can you promise me that the behaviour will go away if we don't make a big deal of it and continue to talk about appropriate behaviour?

[o-mama]

Try to make it a non-issue (take the glamour out of it *grin*). I'm one for calling the kettle black, but try not to react to it. Simply (and calmly) state that if he needs to spit there's the [spitoon outside] or the bathroom sink.

Not really along the same lines, but out of my need to analogize...for whatever the original reason was we have a rule that we only drive on the floor. I've had greater success with the boys following that idealogy on the days that instead of harping at them I simply ask them where they're supposed to drive. Typically, when I do they immediately move their cars or trains to the floor again. In our current living situation there has been one sofa table designated as being okay to drive on. It will require consistensy before you see any improvement probably.

Good Luck!!