need HELP with the attitude sin

[ninipelley]

I have a 9 1/2 yr dd in Preparing and man she is difficult. that is the best word I can come up with. We are very similar in personality so I can relate very well to her (although I don't always let her know this) because i want to help her strengthen in those areas. She is a perfectionist, very literal, concrete minded. The Charlotte Mason approach is challenging for her, especially art! Oh my. She is very argumentative & negative. and passes blame constantly. I don't want to make her sound awful of course she has MANY positives as well. But this is so inhibiting to our school. She is getting far behind in Math, English because she almost acts helpless. She honestly is extremely intelligent she just doesn't want to learn I guess.
I have tried to reach her heart. Try to figure out what sin we are actually dealing with because she is so exhausting & I find myself getting pulled constantly into little "arguements" with her. For example today we were reviewing proper nouns & capital letters. She said "I don't know what they are called." So we reviewed the whole what a noun is, what a common/proper noun was. What is capitalized. then we went through some examples. I said give me names of 2 continents. For example "Antartica, Europe". She says "You already named the ones I was going to." I am trying to be patient now & say "Well, I only named 2, you still have 5 to choose from." She says "I don't know their names". We have learned them. I said "OK- what continent do we live on?" She says "Ok, how do you spell America?" Really? Are you kidding me? Last year we learned how to use the dictionary. Then she picks her nose & I tell her to go wash her hands & do what she needs to in the bathroom. She keeps sitting there & I tell her again. She says "I will after school". I say "Go wash now". She tells me I am wasting school time now by having her leave to go wash her hands. Yesterday we went over our bible verse. I had her read it out loud & then I asked her what she thought the verse meant & her answer was "I don't know, you didn't tell me."
Ok- so we have tried praying. We have tried a bible study to identify the sin & what God specifically says about it. We are using a green, yellow, red chart for consequences. She gets "moved" down for having an unteachable heart. She loses time with her friends after school. We also have some positive reinforcement in place as well.
She doesn't seem to care. she keeps telling me "i want to change, i just don't know how. You aren't helping me." We have talked MANY times about how she has a choice- she is in charge of choosing her behavior. She can choose Satan or God. And that school is her responsibility. It's what we do. Dad works. Kids school.
I don't know. What am I doing wrong? Besides spanking her-which we are starting to think is necessary, 9 yrs old or not.
Advice ladies.

[netpea]

This is just my first impression, but I'd say less talking about the behavior. She knows exactly what she is doing and she is pulling you into a conversation about it every time.

Where you go from there though depends on the child.

• * For instance, would she be embarrassed for her Dad to see bad "grades" on her work. You could "grade" her assignments and have Dad sign them each night if that is the case.
  * If it's strictly rebellion, then you need swift clear consequences every time she starts one of those situations.
  * Is she seeking more control over her school day, "love and logic" teaches giving them choices whenever possible, the key is that they are both choices you can live with such as would you like to do your grammar on whiteboard or paper today? Would you like to start with math or cursive?
  * Does she have trouble knowing what comes next or how long her day is? Would she be motivated by checking off the boxes herself?

I know with my own kids sometimes I spend more time correcting the bad behavior than I do noticing the good behavior. Find the good behavior and what seems to bring it out and you can help to alleviate some of the bad.

Hope something in there is helpful to you.
<hug>

[jer2911mom]

Hugs, I am just on the cusp of 8 with my older dd, and I have heard that 8 and 9 can be very challenging with girls. It really does sound like there is a problem with obedience and respect here, and personally I would nip that immediately with swift consequences, like netpea said. When my dd shows a disobedient or disrespectful attitude, she immediately goes to timeout on the bottom stairs, where she sits up, looking straight ahead, without any form of entertainment whatsoever, and thinks about why she is there (1 min per year of age would probably be good). If she comes back and hasn't changed her heart/attitude, she goes back and has lost her treat for the day (she can have a small treat after school each day). That usually nips it, but if not, she keeps going back and there are further consequences with loss of computer time (important to her), etc. Does your dd have any privileges that are important to her? The main thing is that she is removed from my presence so that she cannot persist with the attitude in front of me. If they don't have an audience, the defiant attitude doesn't gain them anything and they can't keep pushing buttons. I send her back to timeout at the least little sign of a negative attitude. Once we have a day of this, we're usually good for awhile after that.

Also, is your dd getting enough rest? I mostly have these attitude problems when my dd is low on sleep.

It sounds like she is testing you and pushing boundaries, and for you to avoid being drawn into arguments/discussions all the time, she is going to have to understand there is a clear expectation that this behavior is unacceptable, every time. You will not budge. She may be spending a lot of time in time out for the next couple of weeks. And it would probably help to have her make up any work she doesn't get done due to timeout on her own time later in the day.

Hang in there and stand firm. Kids know we love them because of the boundaries we establish for them. You can link me back to this post when my dd is 9, lol. I will pray for you both in this situation. Don't forget the power of prayer!

Kathy

[mamayi]

Oh my do I know what you are talking about! My ds10 and I can go around and around with conversations like you described. And I think I've addressed the situation in a very similar way - identifying the sin, talking about choices, praying, taking away computer, etc. What I have found very effective is when and argument or "attitude" crops up, to stop talking about it and just walk away. If I know that we've addressed the issue and he understands what is expected and he choses to "cop an attitude" I simply walk away with a final comment along the lines of "I'll let you work this out between yourself and God." Then I usually go in another room and cry and pray! Without me there he cannot continue to argue. He's stopped in his tracks and has to deal with his side of the situation. More often than not in a short time he'll come to me and apologize and then we can move forward again. And sometimes (with boys I have found) a good dose of hard, physical work or exercise does wonders for a bad attitude!

You are a good and loving mama and the Lord has your dear daughter in the palm of His hand.

[amarie]

We are having a similar problem with our ds, he is nine, too. Is it the age? I've thought recently that I need to find a good child development book. Arguing, lots of back-talk, bad attitude, defiance...even over simple every day things like, "Its time to get dressed and brush your teeth." It has been carrying into school big time, over silly things that should not be issues, and some days over every task we have to do. Last week I decided to write out instructions for as much work that he could do independently so that we wouldn't have to argue over each step of the day ( ), and when the arguing started, I just told him he wasn't allowed to do anything else until his assignments were done. That helped a lot, but doesn't really address the issue. I so LOVE the curriculum, and I love teaching him and learning with him, and I love having him at home...I just have not known how to handle this new "stage" that we seem to be entering. It has caused a lot of grief (if I'm honest), and lots of soul-searching for me, too...is it something I'm not doing right? Am I exasperating him? Am I nagging too much? (he is either choosing to forget, or honestly forgetting) Am I not making it clear to him what I expect from him? Does he not understand yet how our day flows, or that he doesn't have a choice of whether or not he does his work? Is homeschooling perhaps not the right choice for us? Would he learn and respond better in public school, and do I even know what I'm doing?

For each of our kids, we've found that we have to figure out "what hurts" the most for discipline to be effective. For a long time for him it was an early bedtime, but nothing I've done has seemed to make a dent with this issue. When I talk about it with him, it is like I'm speaking a different language. We've been doing Fear of the Lord and Respect for Authority for the character traits in DITHOR these last few weeks, and he doesn't see the correlation. Anyhow, yesterday we decided to "ground" him from his friends, and we're pretty sure we hit the nail on the head. I told him today that I would give him three warnings and if he got to three, he'd lose time with friends after school again. Our day was smoother. In general, I'm a soft-spoken kind of girl who hates conflict and confrontation...my husband tells me I need to not let our son push me around, so I'm working on that too, and praying about it.



I'll be praying for you!
Amy

[Tansy]

For a long time I really felt My eldest (Sweet Potato) was living In sin and rebellion. Being mean to me seemed to be her hobby, I really struggled. I'd go over stuff with her and she would know it one day and fail the next. Played the victim constantly, Helpless in math, manipulative, annoying. She was so variable we started calling her pendulum child because we never knew how she would behave. I used to label her days as functional or helpless.

Arletas Blog helped me tremendously.
http://www.arletajames.com/article.html
I recommend these articles:
Throw away the stickers,
Ask not Why, but what.
Seeing the forest for the trees,
All Quiet Parenting articles.

Also having a better understanding of my child brain functionality helped.
Because she can totally do this this stuff I know she knows it... She just can't do it today.

The best analogy can give is a 2 drawers. One is a silverware drawer with compartments for forks, knives and spoons. A typical brain has spots for everything and everything lives in those spots. If you ask for a Spoon you can reach in and find the spoon right where it is supposed to be. This is how your brain works.
The other drawer is a junk drawer it has everything in it pens, rubber bands, tape, odd stuff that has no home. This may well be your child's brain. If you put in spoons, knives and forks in it. When you ask for them again, if they are on top she finds them quickly but if they are mixed in, yes the fork is in there but she will have to sort through the whole drawer to find it.

This happens often in Mixed Dominate children. If they step out with their left foot and write with their right hand tilt their head to the left to hear and tilt to the right to read. You have a mixed dominate child. That description fit my child to a T by the way. She was not putting the forks away in that sliver ware drawer but rather the junk drawer. Fixing the dominance to be the same for all parts helped tremendously.

It also removed a part of the defiance, once I started showing her I'm here to help her (and this really goes against my grain it was a huge struggle for me to do every other math problem) She is moving away from the opinion of Mom is a big bad mom (most days). I still struggle. Often I find there are 3 aspects of her I need to consider Her spirit, her soul, and her body.
If she is in a bad spiritual place knowing who she is in Christ helps.
A bad soul place she needs my compassion and or discipline.
A bad body place she needs a physical need met (eye glasses, food, sleep).

Who know parenting would be this complicated. The Quiet parenting stuff helped me tremendously, she can't argue if you don't participate and she eventually makes the right choice, thus setting her up to make right choices in the future.

On the pick nose thing... we have the same problem. 2 things from my arsenal
1. A saline squirt bottle and tissues live in our school area. Picking nose means it's bugging you. So we follow the doctors advice and flush it with saline then she blows or has salty water taste in her mouth. It solves the issues by removing the irritants and the child will hate it so much they will stop after 2-3 months only to pick it up later to then stop again. Next time you go to the Doctor have him confirm that this is a good solution for an itchy nose that needs picking. then its not your fault your just doing what he Doctor ordered.

2. Hand sanitizer She picks her nose she gets a squirt of hand sanitizer. No wandering off to the bathroom or wasting school time in arguments.

You have to often think outside the box to pull the rug out from under her arguments. You can do it your older and smarter than her Parenting can be fun.