Our son is 2.5 years old. At this age I expected him to start disagreeing with his mother and me, but although he does, occasionally, he seems to be disagreeing with himself more. Especially when he just wakes up, or when he needs to go to bed, but also at random other times, he just doesn't know what he wants.
When he is offered a drink, he doesn't want it, but when you turn away, he does. If you put it on the table for him to take whenever he likes, he can debate with himself endlessly, and get really frustrated or hysterical.
He talks really well for his age, and usually can describe his woos and wishes in great detail, so I don't think the frustration comes from wanting something else and not knowing how to ask for it.
It's probably a phase like any other, but although I could find plenty of references online of his behavioral changes so far, I can't find anything about this particular behavior.
Do you have any idea what's going on, and any tips how to deal with it? We mainly feel bad for him, because he's feeling anxiety for (to me) trivial reasons, and we don't know how we can lift that. To be clear, this is not all the time. There are just short periods when this happens.