Reply to How to handle disrespect from a 3yo

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "How to handle disrespect from a 3yo"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1) DD pushes her sitter when she tries to help her and says, "Get away from me." - say "Hey! We don't talk to people like that. How can you tell your sister you don't want her help in a nice way?"

2) DD says to me "LEAVE. get out of my room." at bedtime, because she thinks she can coerce DH to read more books and stretch out bedtime longer with him. CAN she coerce DH to read more books? Hopefully the answer is no. But DH needs to tell her "Larla, you may NOT talk to Mommy that way. If you want someone to leave your bedroom what is a nice way you can say that?"

3) DD says "That's a BAD dinner, I'm not eating any of that. YUCK. This food is YUCKY." You don't say whether or not she eats it. First time she does it "It is a lot of work to make dinner for the family, and you need to respect that. If you don't like it, you take a no thank you bite to try and you keep your negative opinions to yourself. If you don't, you don't have to eat dinner with us." Second time she does it. "Okay, then go to your room. Bye." And hustle her off to her bedroom. AFTER everyone has finished eating and left the table bring her back and say "I was not kidding when I said you can't talk badly about meals cooked. This is dinner. Are you hungry?"

At the age of 3, I generally ignored tone and focused more on actual words the kids say. Although they're old enough to throw attitude, explaining it is a hard concept. The most I say about attitude is "Say those words again nicely." If they don't understand I say the same sentence, once with attitude, once without, so they can really grasp the difference. Keep in mind that kids save their worst behavior for the home, and for the person they're closest with, so I bet her classmates unleash all sorts of shit at home. I bet her classmates parents can't imagine your DD saying this stuff. [/quote]

Op here and thank you for the thoughtful suggestions on how to respond, this is exactly what I needed to see.[/quote]

This is generally good advice, but I definitely wouldn't do #3.  I think that's way overboard.  Don't send your kid to her room without dinner (even if you know you're going to bring her back for it -- because she doesn't know that).  I really believe that's cruel.  I would focus on educating her about how it's rude to say that and just telling her that she doesn't have to like it but doesn't have to say it's "yucky" either.  Other people like it.  Or make a joke of it.  Kids often say they don't like things.  My kid thinks it's hilarious if we make a joke of it.  I've never heard him saying anything that was truly "disrespectful" about a dinner -- it's just his opinion.  If you treat it as an issue of opinion and how to say things nicely rather than jumping to think she's disrespecting you, you'll have a very different response.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics