11 yr old argues with everything i say.

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PET sounds kinda useless. We don't have logical, solveable arguments. We have weird irrational ones and the worst arguments are because we don't understand WTF DD#1 is on about or where she is coming from. The whole thing boils down to the weirdest communication problem known to mankind.

We try and just drop it - 99% of the time she wants *less* than we are willing to offer and she won't compromise and take *more*, which is a source of arguments on its own - but sometimes the stuff she does is just so bizarre we push to know why. Which ends in an argument ...

Like right now, where she is looking for a water bottle, I just told her where the water bottles are, and she is refusing to use the ones that we have used in the past because ... they're used. She won't accept that they are the only drink bottles, they are perfectly clean, and she NEEDS a drink bottle. An argument that is impossible to win from either side. Her solution? She is going to go thirsty. Whatever, not worth continuing THIS argument.

No real surprise that most of the anti-conflict information on the internet is useless. The other kid is at least rational - right now she's having a meltdown because she can't come on big sister's bike trip. Much easier to understand.

The best arguments wtih DD#1 are about money. As in I want to pay her to do a small job, she wants money, but doesn't want to do the job. And she chose her own jobs and volunteered to do them - and used to do them anyway before I paid her for them! She solves these arguments without us by getting other people (including other children) to buy her stuff instead of earning her own money because her horrible mother refuses to give her money for stuff, and this has been going on for YEARS. Its not setting her up for a good work ethic or giving any value to money at all, which peeves me something severe.