My dd is four and is very hard work to the point that I hate to say it but I get almost no enjoyment whatsoever out of being in her company. She is bolshy and bad tempered and every day feels like I'm tiptoeing through a minefield. She is wonderfully behaved at school and in company.
I have done everything I can to try and modify her behaviour (and mine) so that we can get along. She is bright and confident, has bags of character and is often hysterically funny and I'm thankful for that but she debates everything I say and it always escalates as she cannot leave well alone when I start getting cross. I walk away but she will follow me and actually begin to berate me and insult me and I know I need to be the adult but it feels like continual abuse.
There is tension every day. I wake up feeling that today will be a good day but it nearly always ends with me wanting to or actually crying because we have had words. Twice this week she has thrown food at me whilst I've been driving. Once because I had taken the wrapper of the biscuit - she wanted to do it - so she said "I'm not eating THAT!' and threw it at me. Then I had a little bite of a cheese thing she was eating, which she offered - as I passed it back she burst into furious tear because I had put my germs on it and again threw it at me. I just cannot do anything right for her, I get upset then really cross that she came into my life and makes me so miserable.(I'm sorry, I know it sounds self-absorbed) Even the good times are hard to enjoy sometimes as there is resentment hanging over them (on my part)from an earlier confrontation. She is also very finicky, with everything having to be just so and with the rules constantly changing so basically any intervention from me causes hysterics - I have no idea from one day to the next what her new methods of needing to do things are. It makes me so anxious. Some might say perhaps she needs to be like this for security or whatever but why? She has a secure family in me and her dad who are desperately trying to make her childhood happy.
I love this child so much and I desperately want to love the experience of being her mother but it is so hard.
How can I sort this out? Sorry for long post and thanks xx
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HELP!! I really, REALLY need some words of wisdom..
24 replies
crystalpony · 01/03/2007 22:42
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