[saturnfire16]

Originally Posted by Quiteria

Yeah, sometimes with my dd...if I (or her teacher) get adversarial, she can get very stubborn and strong-willed about insisting on doing things her way...but, today for example, I confronted her more gently about something she had done wrong, and she burst into tears. It really wasn't THAT big, but it needed to be addressed, and she was very sensitive to the verbal reprimand of telling her that it was wrong and why. But times when someone has really pushed her into a corner of stubbornness by giving her a punishment of some sort (even as mild as taking away recess), I've seen her fight back against complying in the slightest. I did give her a natural/logical consequence today for the thing we discussed...and she was fine with accepting it because it was more her actions that made the consequence happen instead of ME chosing to spank or taking away an unrelated privilage....strong-willed children have a way of seeing that "YOU are doing this to me," and deciding they'd rather suffer than cave in...but dd is so very sensitive to realizing that she's done something wrong when you gently point out why it's wrong, when you appeal to logic instead of trying to bully her.

I find this with my dd too. For example, if she hurts her sister and I start blaming, shaming, telling her to apologize (which I haven't done for a VERY long time, because I learned better), she will yell NO and will.not.apologize no matter what. But all I have to say to her is "Your sister is hurting. What can you do to help her feel better?" and she will apologize and bring her a toy or give her a hug. In fact, the last few months, I haven't even needed to do that. Now the scenario usually goes dd2 coming to me crying and dd1 right behind her saying "Mom I did xyz, but I told her I was sorry," and it's usually an accident, but she will even tell me when it was on purpose.