Nastiness :

amlea81

What do you do for plain old nastiness? My 3 year old has always been "spirited", highneeds, etc. She can be so sweet, but can turn nasty so so quickly. She has such a temper, which I know we can only work with, but when she's touchy and her switch flips out of nowhere, I'm not sure how to handle it.

She'll yell at us using a lot of the phrases we use on her. Sometimes she'll just scream in out face. The worst is when we'll try to touch her or move her and she'll snap "Don't touch me! Stop hitting me!" because I've never even once used spanking or hitting. Wth does she even get this stuff? I try to only raise my voice in serious situations, but she just turns on us so quickly.

Ignore? Time out? Talk through it? She doesn't tantrum much any more, just manipulates with her words. I guess she does this because she knows she gets a reaction out of us. Help. :

Shayna0182

Most of the time, we use redirection.  Our preschool uses Conscious Disipline methods with him, and it seems to work.  We're working on it at home, and trying to praise the good behavior.  I do find myself yelling less, and working on talking about it with him.

Ignoring works occassionally, but more often than not, he will do something destructive, like knock everything off the coffee table, to get my attention.