Hi, I'm looking for some helpful advice. DS3 (almost 4) is clearly in a testing phase right now. He has started getting argumentative, not wanting to do things that are asked of him, not listening to instructions and whining up a storm. He has apparently been begrudging of any kind of work at school (it's a montessori, so there isn't a whole lot of 'curriculum', but they do all have to do a bit of writing etc, albeit not much). At home, he is giving us a lot of "I just don't want to do anything." ?? Or, if he wants to do something he's not allowed to do, while we used to be able to give him other choices, and he would pick from them, now it's simply become, 'NO! I want what I want and I don't want anything else!' (did I mention he is quite stubborn?)
I'm hoping the phase will pass, and until then, have decided not to push anything on him that isn't everyday rules and discipline (he still needs to clean up his toys and eat his dinner etc etc) I don't want him to feel put upon, but I also don't want him to think it's ok not to listen or not follow the rules that we have set for him. I'm a little frustrated that he doesn't want to do any enrichment stuff that he was so excited about a few weeks ago...I'm not sure where the flip came over, but again, I'm just not going to push anything like that for a little bit - and TRY and get outside more, now that it's not a blizzard every day.
Also, we are at the point where when we ask him a question that we know he knows the answer to, or something that ONLY he knows (aka. 'what do YOU think about this particular thing?' or 'What did you do in school today?') and he just doesn't want to answer, or says "I just don't know the answer" (which is clearly untrue). We have tried to explain that sometimes, even if a question is silly or too easy, OR that he really DOESN'T want to answer, that sometimes he has to try and answer anyway - keeping in mind we don't do a lot of this kind of asking.
In short, we are getting a bit frustrated. We don't know if we should be looking more into what's going on at his school, seeing if there are some problems arising from there that we are unaware of, (he only goes 3 days a week, 9am-3pm) or if this is just assertion of individuality that has taken a bit of a left turn. Any sage words of advice would be great. Thanks.
