Do you love me or not?

Recently my soon to be 4 year old girl is constantly asking everyone in the family especially me and the papa that question.

Is it common for the first child to behave this way when they have a younger sibling who is at the moment getting more attention from the parents? Is that a sign of insecurity or sibling rivalry? Are we not juggling our love correctly between the kids resulting in such a behaviour? Should I be alarm? What should I do?

Of late she is showing a lot of unacceptable behaviours which warrants some whacking (on top of the usual reasoning, explaining, scolding, warning and punishing) - running and playing in the middle of the road despite us telling her many times that it is dangerous (if you asked her what she did wrong, she can tell you that she cannot play on the road as there will be oncoming cars), throwing up food whenever she feels like it, most of the time with the excuse that it was too big a spoon and it made no difference if we're feeding her or she was feeding herself or if we're eating at home or eating out (sometimes we only give her half a teaspoon and she still said it was too big), not listening to what we say and intentionally not doing what we repeatedly asked her to and many more....

I know kids will be kids and we can't expect them to be perfect at all times but as a parent I believe we also need to teach them from young on what's dangerous and acceptable and what's not and we will use whatever method that works. Having read many blogs written by mothers who I look up to in parenting, I know whacking is not the best solution and I don't like doing it too but sometimes I just don't know what else to do or how else to send the message across to her. Whenever she misbehaves, I always start by reasoning and explaining and if she still repeats the same after a few times then I will move on to warning and scolding. If that didn't work it will be punishing (usually we'll make her stand at a corner by herself staring at the wall and she will cry and cry) and lastly we'll use the cane. No matter what methods were used, we always explain to her at the end of it why we did what we did to hopefully help her understand.

I am really at my wits end on how to handle this girl of mine at this stage. I hope this will only be temporary and she will learn to understand better as she gets older. Can anyone please tell me at what age things will start making sense to them?

I do constantly tell her I love her and her brother (trying to instill in her head that I love both the same no matter what) but everytime after an unhappy episode be it scolding or punishing or whacking or even a simple thing where I don't oblige what she wants then she will say that I don't love her and will wrap her arms around herself and show me that she is unhappy. She will only show me her happy face again when I say I love her.

Whenever I am home she will want me to do everything for her such as bathing her, feeding her, brushing teeth with her, making her milk, playing with her etc. She won't want the maid or the papa. It feels like she's trying to tell me she wants my attention and I am trying to give her my undivided attention as much as I can (which is very hard with a 1 year old around) and I hope every little effort I am putting in will make a difference.

Looking at her reactions, I also sometimes wonder if I actually caused this. You see, the maid helps me with Hayley when I am at work and on weekends and I don't usually let the maid handle Zac as I don't trust her with a toddler (she tends to be forgetful and careless). So I usually will bath, feed and attend to Zac myself on weekends while she helps me with Hayley. Before having the maid, I will attend to both myself. I am wondering if she's taking this negatively that I don't care for her anymore and leaving her to the maid? I wish I can just get into her head and understand what she's thinking.

I actually did think of this before and tried attending to both kids myself on weekends and was told off by some people that I should not do that now that I have a maid. I was constantly asked what's the point of having a maid if I still have to do everything myself? Anyway, from this weekend onwards I am going to brush aside what others have to say and try changing my approach and see if it will help.

Sigh.... with 2 kids I am already at wits end. I really salute parents with 3 or more kids and doing it wonderfully.