Almost 4 and suddenly developed awful screaming tantrums and hitting us

[galaxy]

My normally passive dd is turning into a whining ogre. She shouts all the time and screams when she is told to calm down. She gets herself really worked up when told off or told she is not having something if she's been really naughty. Tonight for example, she wanted me to play her a clip of a song on the laptop at bedtime which I was about to do. She started to shout that she missed the first few words and screamed at me to re-start it. I tried to explain that screaming at me wasn't going to get her anywhere and she started to hit me and then thumped the lap-top and then burst into hysterical tears and couldn't stop sobbing - it wasn't crocodile tears - she was out of control.

She changed C/minder in July and her routine is out of sync with holidays etc and I learned today that the TV is on all day at the C/minders. I suppose it's possible that she's picking up bad habits from kid's TV?

I introduced a reward chart a couple of weeks ago which seemed to be helping but she gets really upset if she doesn't earn a smiley face or gets a sad face on there. She's back to nursery tomorrow and I'm hoping things wil get back to normal as I'm really struggling with this.

[chipkid]

look in the archives for the fxxxing awful fours-it really was the worst age with ds.
He is also susceptible to change and too much tv-so hopefully when things get back to some form of normality-things may get a little less stressful

[galaxy]

Today's been better - she went to nursery, then to childminders then her 1st ballet class and she's just had her bedtime story and gone straight to sleep.