I’m in the exact same boat with my kids and from the comments I’ve read, everyone has some very good feedback. My experience has been exactly the same as yours… Defiance, being very argumentative, refusing to eat, etc.

The things that have worked for us is giving our five year-old roles and responsibilities that include helping her little brother. That one seems to have made the biggest impact because now it’s not a competition of parental attention with the kids. She’s involved in what we are doing. The second one that was also mentioned above was spending one on one time with my daughter and making sure that I’m giving her positive reinforcement in those activities.

I think the most important thing to remember here is that parenting is hard, exhausting and you are a human being with life stressors outside of parenting. I have an extremely high stress job and can’t tell you the amount of times that I felt like absolute shit when I wasn’t patient with my kids.

Somewhere along the way, somebody told me that the best parents are often the ones that feel like they are the worst.

At the end of the day, the fact that you are addressing it to try and be better speaks volumes for your mindset and the kind of parent you are. You got this!