Thanks Dude, glad to know I'm not alone. I'm suffering heavily at the moment!! This kid is one who *reacts* to the hilt. (Meanwhile, I have the intellectual OE going overtime in DS, telling me all about some kind of fruit that doesn't grow in our area... doing extra research as I ask him about hardiness zones, and whether it could grow indoors, etc... Getting it from both the positive - yet exhausting - and negative - and oh man even more exhausting - sides right now! LOL.) She digs into a position, and sticks with it.

Can2K, thanks for the suggestion, I have tried that. She digs in her heels almost immediately, even if she *knows* she was wrong - she doesn't like to admit it, ever. EVER. She has told me she wouldn't care if someone said X to her. She also tends to ask her brother - and too often he couldn't care less what *she* says to him; he's so used to her negativity that it rolls off his back (now, as I mentioned above, if someone else said it, he'd be deeply injured!). He's too literal to understand that I need. him. to. lie. In that one situation only ;-) So that backfires on me ;-)

The sandwich method might work. I have complimented her on many of her gifts that lead to issues in this house (she will be an excellent lawyer someday - can anyone say loophole? persistence?). That said, I haven't consciously tried that with her (I've done it many times in giving bad news to someone in writing though, so familiar with the technique!).

I'm feeling very tired of difficult parenting at the moment.