This post will be light. But important. In fact the main content is going to have come from you, the readers. I have run out of ideas.
Our daughter just turned 4. We thought that on the day after her 4th birthday she would wake up and be a small child. No longer a baby or toddler. Gone would be the tantrums and disobedience and her desire for parental approval would outweigh her internal struggle to flip us the metaphorical bird. She would be an angel sent to dwell among mortals.
This has not been the case. OK, she gets into mischief less, she communicates better, she self-soothes and she says "I love you" a lot. It's cute. She is hilariously clever and makes me laugh everyday. But her tantrums are louder. She defies us more frequently and more openly. She doesn't want to do anything if it comes out of my or my wife's mouth.
Here's the puzzler. We're PERFECT parents! I kid. I kid. But we do normal things parents do: we give her choices, we foster independence, but we set limits and certain behavior is never rewarded and time-outs do occur for tantrums and hitting and such. We try to use language like "Would you please ... let's ... will you ... etc." and that has limited effect.
So what's up? Has anyone had an "energetic, active" child and had success at this age? Is it possible to get them to be relatively obedient? How do you foster the exploration and independence instinct without sacrificing the rules of the house or letting them run all over you?
The floor is open. And I want practical answers, if possible. The kind with time-tested results. Not something from a book. If there are some good comments, I'll try them out and post about our success! It take a village, ya'll.
