5 year old girl sniffs Mom's arms

I have a friend who owns her own store.  She takes her 5 yr. old daughter to work with her every day when she's not in school.  Besides having major temper tantrums for things as little as not being able to fold a piece of paper, and talking back, she will hang on her mom and sniff her arms.  She will also bite and pull on her mom's shirt.  At pre-k, she was told she would not be able to make it at Kindergarten because she couldn't do normal things like write her name and draw stick figures. We know she can because she does it all the time at the store.  She is very stubborn.  When she colors, she won't even try to stay in the lines or, if she does, afterward fills the page with angry scribbles.  I have tried to talk to her, myself, because she won't listen to her mom.  When you talk to her, you have to hold her and aim her face at you when you talk (she's mad and doesn't want to listen).  You can ask her what you said, and she won't know.  She has problems with that at school, too.  Most of this is just stubbornness and lack of attention.  I don't understand the sniffing.  Do you have any clues?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

This little girl is displaying signs of emotional disorder and it would be prudent for her parents to arrange an evaluation. The sniffing behavior is not nesessarily indicative of any particulalr problem, though it manifests itself most often in children who have sensory integration issues or who have some variant aliong the pervasive developemntal disorder spectrum of conditions.