Three Year Old with an Attitude Mainly Towards Mom!

My 2 year old does the same thing! He spits and when I tell him no he points at me with a scowl on his face and says NO MOMMY! My limited experience is this (i also have a 5 year old) your daughter is testing your limits. She is trying to see if you are going to be consistant and if you are serious or not. Tell her if she spits she will get this punishment (if timeouts don't work, try taking something from her that she loves, sounds mean but she will learn and you won't have to do it too many times) and follow through. It's tiring, but she will stop doing that when she sees you mean it...be prepared though, she will move on to something else. It is also part of the age and she will grow out of it being so bad.

I have found that my kids test my limits every so often (yes my 5 year old still does it). They need to see what the rules are and if you will enforce them. They need the boundaries. good luck!

I would try this. At 3 she's pretty smart already. When it's not happening, in a calm time, explain that you love her and don't want to fight with her about her spitting. From now on, there will be no discussion when it happens. Every time she spits she loses... (whatever is something important to her, but it would be good if she could actually see something go in a box on the fridge or something). No arguing, no time out, just an automatic consequence. Good luck! My daughter is 10 and stubborn so I feel for you! C.

I work with kids that have negative behaviors as part of my job. The main thing to think about is WHY she is doing this? I am not there,obviously so I am gonna make a guess. Most of the times for kids getting negative attention is still getting attention. Maybe this is the way of your daughter getting your attention. I would continue with the timeouts, but another thing that I have learned with ALL children in ALL situation that in addition to discipline, the most effective thing is to catch your child doing good. If your daughter learns that she can have more positive interactions with you when she is doing good things, the negative behaviors will likely decrease. It can be as simple as catching her sitting nicely at the table, etc. I hope this helps, and that makes some kind of sense ( : good luck!

Hi K. -!

It sounds like your daughter is completely normal - and yes - moms get most of this because you are the primary caregiver and she knows you the best - and she knows your buttons the best :)

I found with my kids the less of a deal I made out of things that bugged me, the quicker they gave up on them - they are looking for things to 'work' on you to get their way or to simply get a reaction out of you - if it doesn't, they move on. They try it until they learn it doesn't 'work'.
I would probably first try to completely ignore it - just quietly make sure that you follow through with whatever you originally told her she couldn't do. Don't give her the reaction she is looking for. If that doesn't work, I might do something like grabbing her tongue and holding on to it if she sticks it out, and tell her if she sticks it out, other people might grab it and you never know when (or if) they'll let go :)
Another thing that I might try if all else fails is to flick a little water on her face when she spits - tell her you don't like to be wet either...:)

Good luck with this one-!

Hi K.~
My 2 1/2 year old has also started doing this to me. I notice it mostly when she hears the word "NO" come out of my mouth. I know spanking/hitting is very much frowned upon. But, after many failed trips to the time out corner. I started popping her on the mouth (not hard, just enought to scare her). Mainly getting her tongue. And after 3 or 4 times, she has never done it again. A little tough love works!
Hope that doens't sound too mean. But I can't have her going around spitting on people lika a camel.