So girls do go through a weird stage at 4 & 1/2? Whatever the stage DD is on right now, it's horrible. Teenage attitude coupled with preschooler tantrums.
She was really a perfectly well-behaved child when she was 2. I don't know where that child went. I miss her very, very much.
FWIW, I've seen this with both girls and boys. Our ds and one of our dds were both angels at 2-3 but experienced those "terrible twos" later on. Our "terrible two" dd turned into an angel for most of her elementary school years and then moved back to the "dark side" when puberty hit.. but is emerging once again as an all-around really nice teen. I've seen cousins and friends of our kids and kids of friends all go through the growing up years and the one thing that seemed to be a common thread was - there was no predicting when the difficult stages would hit!
I will second DeeDee's advice above though - if the tantrums/rages/etc seem to be outside the norm and typical parenting techniques don't seem to be effective, I'd look for professional advice re whether or not they are signaling something more. When the impact of having an undiagnosed disability kicked in for our ds in early elementary, he had terrible tantrums and it was not at all obvious it was related to anything other than a delayed episode of the "terrible twos" - until we had other feedback returning to us from school and a professional evaluation that revealed the root cause of the tantrums. Looking back in hindsight, we then realized that a lot of his "terrible two" behaviors that hit around 4 years old were related to the disability (dyspraxia and expressive language challenges in his case).
Hang in there!
polarbear
