This is more of a vent than anything else but The last couple of weeks have been exhausting! DS4.5 has a comment about everything, anything I tell him he refuses to do (verbally refuses and then sometimes turns around and does what I asked anyways), everything is an act of serious negotiation ("we're leaving in 10 minutes" ... "NO! I need 20 minutes!" ..."do this ..." "Can I do this instead?"... you get the picture!). And to top it off, the last two weeks anything he needs he tells me in a series of CLUES! I feel like I'm doing nothing else but guessing what it is he wants! When he's hungry he says "I want something that's small and oval and juicy" (why can't he just say GRAPES???) or "I want something that's almost like a triangle and red and juicy" (can we just call it STRAWBERRIES???). EVERYTHING is a guessing game here and he gets frustrated when I don't know what he wants and even more frustrated when I just don't have the time and patience to play this little game of his. I feel like my brain is fried! Please, tell me it's just a phase and it won't be like this forever? And OMG how upset he gets when he realizes you were not listening to him! I feel like we are always just a half a step away from major tantrum. I'm exhausted from having to think all the time!

I want to commiserate. DD3.5 started doing the "Guess what I am thinking" game and at first I encouraged it. I do like playing the 20-questions game. But now I can't get her to stop and I am tired of guessing. Thankfully, she does not throw tantrums. She just makes a real sad face and lets me know how unhappy I am making her.

After reading your other post I would say he is practising a new skill exclusivly on you because hr has no one else to practise it on. 4.5 here can be hard for bright kids because they are ready for the next step of learning. But we have almost exclusively play base preschools then start school on our fifth birthday. It is probably a phase but the next phase may be just as annoying.

It's like everything is a competition in his head and he needs to win win WIN to feel ok. I've noticed it has gotten a lot worse the last 3 weeks when he's only missed 1 day of school. We didn't have this problem over the winter when he was sick a lot and home half the time. Now that he's at school every morning it's horrible. I wonder if it's because he spends the mornings having to comply all the time with what the teacher tells him and when he gets home he just needs to fill that need for running his own life? Ha was BORN self-directed.

I'm with you. The twos were angelic. The 4.5 to 5.33 and still counting, are much much harder. I now in hindsight attribute this to letting him run all over us, because it was so "cute" when he was little. We thought it was darling when he ordered us around with his adult vocabulary, or explained how something worked. Now we get an earful for not listening to him...because we trained him that way. We hung on so tight to every word and praised his understanding of things with awe. He got so much attention for being so smart, that now he demands it. I had my first negative social experience the other day with this. Playmates' parent who used to comment too on how "cute" it was that he read, or said such "cute" adult phrases, etc....now was very put off by DS using such phrases, while talking to her kids. What was charming at 3, is now annoying at 5. I hope that in time, he learns to temper himself for the situation...but I imagine it is a hard thing to learn. "Why did they love me when I was three and read to them, but scorn me when I'm five and try to explain some math to them?" But, even as the parent, I feel the same way. Being told by a five year old to exercise because he pinches a tiny bit of fat on my arm, just isn't as cute as being told by a three year old, especially when the five year old is ten times more demanding and used to being listened to. I think it is not just a phase to be outgrown, I think it is a stage to be re-learned. They are still cute and the apple of our eye, but not the world's eye... And they need to learn their place.

See, we have never really let him get away with anything like this. Yes, we spent years of tip-towing around certain issues and situations because of his sensory processing issues (which used to be absolutely horrid and now they sometimes are and sometimes aren't very noticeable). But we have always made sure that he understands that WE as parents (and some grown ups) make the rules that he needs to follow and that "no" means "NO!!!" but now it's a constant power struggle. I don't give in but I do lose my patience a lot more than I used to. He's still among the more behaved kids when it comes to being out with our friends and they always comment on me being strict with him but I know I have to or he WILL run me over. But the last 3 weeks have been NUTS!

My kids have always been harder somewhere in the 4.5-6 window than 2-3.

My 4.5 year old stomps his foot and then quickly says "there was an ant I needed to kill" or pushes a chair angrily followed by "I just thought you wanted that moved."

DS8.5 was a pill at 4-5. His younger brother is following the same pattern.

This too shall pass.

Pardon my language, but this is the exact reason my friend and I called it the f'ed up fours! Terrible twos have nothing on an argumentative, articulate gifted four year old playing mind games!

Glad to hear this should still pass! I was beginning to worry that he's already turned into a teenager 10 years early! lol