"I Know It All!" Attitude. What Works?

Let him learn on his own. Let him come to you for advice. he is TRYING to figure things out on his own.

A mess? Let him clean it up. Don't cave and do it for him. He made the mess, he can clean it up.

The PT needs to tell him he's not doing it right and to listen to you as you can SEE if he's doing it right or wrong. You need to get the PT on your page about this.

When he refuses to listen on important things like safety? Then he needs to be removed from whatever he is doing and told it is NOT SAFE.

Future punishment means nothing. He knows that. Discipline must be swift and immediate. In the middle of a session or not. He needs to be promptly corrected in his behavior.

If he puts his hands over his ears - pull his arms down and tell him that there will be no playing or whatever it was he was doing until he can listen like a big boy.

Follow through, boundaries, rules, consequences - natural and enforced...

you can do this. It is hard, but you CAN do this!

I am cracking up because I frantically clicked on your post thinking "oooh my husband is like that, too! I can help her!"

But this isn't about your husband.

I second Wild Woman - your son needs to figure these things out on his own, so allowing him to make the mistakes is essential (short of there being a safety concern).

What I see that works best, with kids and adults alike, is positive reinforcement and a lack of nagging/correction. Trust me, I know it is hard to sit back and watch him do something wrong, but he has to learn!

The key is to really focus on what he does right, and then in time, he will learn to accept your direction when he is doing it wrong.

GOOD LUCK!

ps - I am thinking of trying the ice cream thing with my husband.

Ditto Wild Woman.
Kids learn by doing. It's one of the most frustrating parts of parenthood, for sure, but he needs to figure things out and make mistakes, and then be held accountable for those mistakes. This is going to follow you into the teen years and beyond. You can tell a child ten times not to do x, y and z but sometimes it takes getting hurt, getting a bad grade or getting a ticket before they actually "get it." It's called natural consequences, and while it's been frustrating generations of parents (probably since time began) it really is nature's teacher!

I have to agree with the others. You said you only give suggestions on the really critical stuff, but are you sure you're not habitually offering suggestions on how to do things?

Understand that "suggestions" come off as criticism and the message that he can't do things right, no matter how kindly you word your suggestion.

I think, if it's absolutely critical that he do something in a certain way, that you continue with the bribe method. Otherwise, let him be. When you say "endanger someone or himself," the only things I can think of that fall into that category are running into the street or carrying kitchen knives. Other than that, most 5 year olds don't enter that much "dangerous" territory.

Mama, I know you mean well, but you are hindering your child when you try to do things for him or help him "improve" on a regular basis. Allow him to fail -- that's how we grow. He is ignoring you because he wants to try things out for himself, and that's a good thing, and something to be rewarded. I made the mistake of involving myself too much in my oldest child's "improvement," so I speak from experience.

Kids are USUALLY so much better for teachers and other adults like a PT.
Maybe your kid is different but I would try waiting in the hall and letting the PT be in charge. As a teacher kids are SO much better behaved when their parents aren't around. Does your son go to preschool or K? Let the teachers work with him on his pencil grip or whatever.... Ask them to pay close attention to whatever you're worried about, Ask dad to get involved, and then you back off as much as you can. This is why people hire tutors and put kindergarteners in Kuman, it's so much easier than teaching them themselves. You and your son are in a bad rut. Back off and let others work with him and as stated below let him figure out things on his own when possible

I agree with the others. Let the small stuff go without any suggestions. Let him practice on his own. He may work around to finally doing it the way you THINK it should be done, or he may come up with a way of doing it that's more comfortable for him. Either way, practice makes perfect. He's not going to want to "practice" anything in front of you if you don't give him some time and space to work things out on his own.

As for anything that would hurt himself or others, you can't fool around with that so if he doesn't want to listen, curtail the activity. And keep up with those bribes at PT time.

My son is also 5 and I sometimes see that "I know it all attitude." as well. Most of the time, I try to let those natural consequences be the teacher.

Currently, we are trying to teach him to eat with real chopsticks, not the training ones for kids. (We live in Japan so this is a necessary life skill here.) He can eat fine with the kids chopsticks, but he will start kindergarten soon and needs to be able to eat with the real ones. First I tried to teach him how to use them; Then my husband who is Japanese and a native chopstick user unlike me tried, but we were met with the 'I know how to do it attitude.' When our son failed to pick up any food, he got mad, stuck his fingers in his ear when we offered to help, and stormed off without eating. So we bought a chopstick game where you have to use chopsticks to move different shaped beans. He was super excited to play, but again we met the same frustration with our son not being able to listen to our suggestions with how to hold. One day, we just demonstrated without using any words, still the same response. Yesterday, we were filling out one of the forms for kindergarten. It had a question about if there was anything we would like the kindergarten teachers to work on with him. We wrote to please teach him how to use chopsticks. Sometimes, you just have to let someone else be the teacher and step away. My guess is that he will be very hungry on those first few days of kindergarten when they will be eating with chopsticks. I kind of feel sorry for the kindergarten teachers and other students if he is hungry. My son can be most unpleasant to be around if he is hungry. But if noone wants to be around him and he is hungry enough, he might start to see just how necessary it is that he take our suggestions. It's tough to watch though. If he gets nasty though, and throws the chopsticks down or hits something then he does get talked to and some consequence will happen (usually his playtime disappears because he doesn't want to apologize.) I simply tell him what I expect and wait it out. We have sometimes even waited it out until dinner or bathtime and then he will finally apologize. So not fun for us, but totally gets the results we wanted. He knows that I expect him to apologize for throwing or hitting. I try to talk with him about his feelings and really listen and repeat back what he says to me, and we try to brainstorm on ways to make it better next time. We do yoga to calm down. He understands that he needs to be able to use the chopsticks because he will go to kindergarten, but we haven't come up with ny good solutions so far on how to learn how.

It has been my experience with my son that the bribes and punishments really don't work well with him. We stopped doing that altogether. Now, I praise him with specific praise when he does something well or the desired behavior. I am teaching him how to read and write in English since this will not be taught at school until much later and then taught by a non-native speaker. I understand how frustrating that attitude can get. Most parents are not in the position that they need to teach a school subject to their kid, so giving that over to another person is often the better option. In our case, I step back and ask myself am I expecting too much from my son right now. Sometimes we take a break and don't practice ABCs. I yry to take my clues from my son on his readiness for reading. He loves to look at books. The other day, he picked a book of his shelf and I overheard him reading from it. He came running up to me afterwards telling me that he read the book all by himself. I took that oportunity to specifically praise him. "You worked so hard learning how to read and write the letters and now you can read that book all by yourself." Then I invited him to play ABC games with me. Use that praise to further motivate and draw the connections to the harder necessary to practice part and the outcome. Specific praise really works better than, the generic "That's wonderful. You did a good job." type of praising trap that many parents fall into. You might try using specific praise with your son's physical therapy. And I would talk to the therapist about suggestions for improving practicing with you at home.

I don't know if that helps much, but you are not alone in this stage.