BUT, my husband does not have the problem with him like I do or his teachers do. My son will listen to him first time without arguing much of the time.
I wish it was just me! but he corrects everyone. He even corrects strangers at the grocery store! Which usually earns me the "my child would never dare to correct an adult" look. It's not my fault they made the mistake of calling his TEAL shirt blue or commented on his cool "shoes" when he is wearing sandals. Mistakes like that really get under skin and he can't resist letting someone know that they are wrong.
And then stop discussing it and expect action. It takes a while to resist answering the questions and debate but if you want to be successful you can't be baited. "I am not going to discuss it." Or "It's not a debate" are about as far as you need to go. It may take a bit of time and it's hard to know when you really want to enforce the no debate rule, but you'll get the hang of it.
We use the "I am not going to debate with you line" everyday and he has NO problem immediately altering his behavior. We do not allow back talk, whining, but's, or why's as a response to a direct order and he has learned not do them. He's too sneaky for direct backtalk and arguing, instead he only alters his behavior to the minimum of what the instructions imply, which makes difficult to justify why his actions are unacceptable. I do try to choose my words carefully, but it is so hard to outsmart his train of thought. Even his comment about not being able to take the bat outside, came AFTER he followed my directions and took the bat to his room.
Thanks bh14
It's nice to feel like I'm not the only one.
