I think it's important to make sure you are perceiving a child and not another adult. I think maybe that can help if you are able to lower your expectations from the outset, so that you will not be so freaked out when higher expectations are not met.

My mother was similar based on our old home videos that I have seen. She always seemed to regard me as an adult, even when I was barely walking. Her words and actions in the videos made it clear that she always thought I was doing things just to make her mad or to be bad, when in reality I was just developing and exploring and testing the world.

As a result both she and my father (who was even worse) would often have explosive anger and bitterness towards me.

Thing is I don't even remember that phase of my life, from 0 to about age 7. I wasn't even developed enough I guess to form any solid memories of it. I really was just a little developing creature.

So best advice I can give is to try to remember when you were five years old. Can you even remember it? And if you can, were you actively plotting to do bad things, or did you sometimes just test things and explore, only to suddenly be met with a very scary reaction from your mother?

Try to see your own 5-year-old self in your child, to help you in the moment to consciously realize that she is a child, and not an adult who is just screwing with you. Instead she is learning and developing, and some parts are going to be slow, and some parts of her learning boundaries and rules will involve testing the waters. Try to remember that it is always about learning and not a personal attack against you.

I am sure this all much, much easier said than done, but that is the only advice I can give just based on my own experiences and observations with my own situation as a child. I think we get programmed on how to respond to behaviors from adults, and it can be hard to adjust our settings for perceiving and interacting with children.