Going thru the terrible 3's!!

I have four children, aged 3, 4, 6, and 7. They have all went through the "terrible two's" and I called them the "god-awful three's". In my experience with my own kids, they will do what they can to try to play you and especially play the parents against each other. Kids, even at 3 and 4 years old are a lot smarter than we tend to give them credit for. I understand that your husband may have made her cry, but she was crying only because her feelings were hurt. He didn't spank her, so there was no reason for her to cry. She may not be used to the firmness or maybe she is used to his firmness and when you're not there he just lets her cry about it, but if she knows that if he yells at her and makes her cry that you're going to jump in and it takes the attention off of her and you two disagree, she's going to keep doing it. And rule of thumb, let her cry! When my kids get their feelings hurt because they did something that they weren't supposed to do, I have a "crying corner" and that's exactly where they go until the get it together. We go through a round of questions. Are you hurt? Did you fall down? Are you bleeding? Did someone hit you? Did you get your butt spanked? Are you sick? If the answer is no to all of those questions, to the "crying corner" they go and when they stop, they can come out. Communicate with her yes, but it's the father's place to be firmer with the kids. It's the mother's place to be the nurturing one. But you have to let him do his job as a father. You have to let him discipline her. I understand that right now she's only 3 and she's cute and you don't want to see her upset, but it's not going to be cute when she's 13 and she learned at 3 years old how to play mom and dad against each other and make them argue and then she eventually gets away with whatever it was that caused the argument to begin with. I'm not trying to tell you how to raise your daughter, just giving a suggestion about how I deal with my own. Good Luck!