My ds is 3 1/2 and is driving me up the wall. Sometimes he can be so sweet and then other times he is so mean. Out of the blue he will just hit his little sister and say I was just trying to get her to laugh. He also lies and blames things on his ds. This week I have decided that I have had enough of his additude and we are not going to let him get away with anything. I feel that he is in time out a lot and I am always yelling at him. Am I being too hard on him. These are the things that he goes in timeout for with no warnings hitting, not telling the truth, talking bad, (which is the worst he is always talking nasty to us and thinks that he can talk to me and scold me when I do soemthing he does not like)Please help. We love him so much and are trying to teach him that his words are powerful and we need to watch what we say and it seems that he does this just to test us. Is this just a stage or do I really need to crack down even hardeR???

I think your best bet at this age is to model good behaviour. When he hits, comfort the hit child then turn to him and say, "We do not hit, hitting hurts". If he persists a time out may be in order. You must be consistent. It sounds like you have your hands full, but you have to be consistent in order for him to realize you mean business.

You say he lies to you, at 3 and a half he is too young to really know he is lying. They don't really know this until they are 5 or 6. Instead of asking, "did you hit your sister?" tell him, "I saw you hit your sister, we do not hit, hitting hurts", etc. etc. Don't put him in the position of having to lie to you.

You say he talks, "nasty", what do you mean by that? Does he curse or use vulgar language or do you mean he yells and talks disrespectfully to you? If he curses and uses vulgar language who is he learning it from? If he is using it because he hears it from you (I'm not saying that you do, I'm just staying IF he hears it from you) then you need to stop and if you slip up, admit to him that you made a mistake, ie. "I shouldn't have said that, that is an angry word and we don't say that in our house, I apologize for saying that".

If you mean that he talks disrespectfully, you must model the behaviour that you want him to use with you. If you speak disrespectfully to him (again, not that you do) then you can't blame him for speaking disrespectfully to you.

From the behaviour you describe, I don't think you are being 'mean' by reinforcing what he should/should not be doing. But I'd do it respectfully and without yelling. He is probably yelling at you because you are yelling at him. Above all be consistent. Hope that helps.

No I don't curse. but he does talk disrespectfully to me and my husband. He will tell us what to do and boos us around. Yes I argee that I need to watch the way I talk to him at times but he is so stuborn that by the time he does something I am so frusterated with telling him to do it that I raise my voice. We do not talk down to him or anything like that but he likes to do the opposit of what we encourage him to do.
As for liying I do believe that he does know what he is doing b/c when he does it he gets a little grin on his face. We have explained it to him and he is very smart and pick things up fast. He is doing better with that b/c he knows that if we found out that he lied to us then he gets to sit in timeout longer then if he would have told us what really happened.
I know the biggest thing for me is to be consisten but it is hard at times b/c I have a 19 month old and a 4 month old that demand a lot of my time also.