Name change for this one.
DD is 2.5. I’m on my own (single parent, sole custody) and virtually no other support. DD is at nursery 5 full days a week where apparently she eats everything and is a little angel. She’s also pretty good when out with peers and other children in general, is socially confident and happy. She’s not ‘awful’ at home, but when she’s with me she is a lot more difficult. I’m kind of expecting people on here to say that what she’s doing is normal for a 2 year old but I feel like I'm struggling a bit and looking for someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong or recommend some book, course that will help. Open to ideas.
1. Food
I get told that at nursery DD eats everything. Things like lentils, meat, and potato. At home, here is a typical day eating:
Breakfast - more often that not will eat 3 weetabix, though sometimes has 1 spoonful of rice crispies. Typically the most successful meal of the day.
Mid morning snack - she likes snacks. Usually e.g. a pile of satsumas, or some nuts (she will snack on a bag of brazil nuts), something like that.
Lunch - here’s where we start to struggle - sometimes bits of cucumber, tomato, sometimes scrambled egg. I struggle to get her to eat a sandwich though sometimes she will eat a bread roll and nothing else at all. Generally refuses cheese. Refuses tuna point blank. Will sometimes accept peanut butter, if I give her jam will lick if off the bread and ask for more so i avoid.
Mid afternoon - usually something like rice cakes and raisins, or she will eat a whole apple or pear.
Dinner - this is the difficult part and where we really fight. She will not usually eat anything I would typically serve - so e.g. meat, fish, potatoes (maybe chips but not always). Won’t eat mashed at all. Won’t eat any cooked vegetable. Will eat baked beans 50% of the time if I’m lucky. Will usually eat plain pasta or rice but if I try to put a sauce on it (say, tomato) she will scream at me. Will usually eat fish fingers but not always. Won’t eat pizza. If I put anything she won’t eat on her plate she wails (ear splitting)and won’t eat anything at all, just insists I remove it. I remain calm and try not to react, and praise her if she tries something new (she ate lamb once) but can't say that's had much effect (she didn't eat it the next times)
I do generally give a ‘pudding’ at dinner time, she asks for it and I want her to eat something. It might be 2 petit filous, or some raspberries and creme fraiche.
I KNOW her diet isn’t awful, but it’s the dinner time that is really getting to me. I have tried cooking so many different delicious things only to have her scream at me and want to get down from the table, and it spoils my enjoyment of food (and I am a real foodie) when she does that. I’ve given up recently and just serve her plain pasta or rice, and I eat the nice food on my plate. She then points at my plate and says “I don’t like that’ at 10 second intervals, which is just as annoying.
I know some would say don’t give her the snacks/puddings, but they aren’t unhealthy and she has to eat something. I don’t want food to become an issue but also don’t want her to learn to live on snacks, or see them as the ‘prize’
2. Hitting/Kicking
Me, not anyone else as far as I know.
Example - this bank holiday she has been punching me (closed fist) in the face repeatedly, and kicking me in the face when I’m trying to dress her. She is tiny but can still hurt a lot.
With the hitting, so far I’ve begun sitting her on the sofa, counting slowly to 20 in a calm voice, holding her there. She cries a lot but seems to get it, though won’t always say sorry afterwards (I haven’t insisted upon that)
With the kicking, I'm ashamed to say I slapped her hard on the leg this morning and then she really did wail. I didn’t mean to do it at all, it was just an instinctive reaction to being full on kicked in the face. She then kept showing me her leg and saying I hurt her, which made me feel guilty as hell.
I try to explain verbally, repeatedly, that it hurts when she hits/kicks mummy, that I want her to be gentle please, that it wasn’t very nice, was mean when she hurt me. I think she knows all that, because sometimes she ‘feigns’ as if to throw a punch and watches to see how I'll react. When she does that I look at the sofa and back at her, and that seems to stop her.
Advice..??? - I don’t want this to escalate and am so scared she will remember me slapping her when she’s older and want nothing to do with me.
3. Repetition and rejection
Here are some examples:
DD: I want x
Me (no reply)
DD: I want x
Me (no reply)
DD: I want x
Me (no reply)
x 20.. I then give it to her..
DD: I don’t want that
DD goes up to table at meal time with her blanket and looks like she’s going to put it on her chair, struggles, wails and stomps feet
Me: do you want some help with that?
DD: yeah… (sniffs)
I go to help her, put the blanket on her chair
DD shouts angrily, wails, stomps ‘I don’t want that!’
I then walk away and leave her to it
DD (upset): mummeeeee mummeeeee mummeeeee
Me: come for a kiss/cuddle
DD: either says ‘I don’t want a kiss’ or gets me to lift her up just enough to use my energy, onto hip/knee then immediately wriggles ‘want down’
(then switches to another one of the annoying behaviours listed)
DD refuses to brush her teeth so I have to sit her on my lap, pin her arms and wait until she wails to do it - which works, but feels awful. I have tried all the cajoling I can think of before getting to this stage, but it didn’t work.
if I suggest anything (e.g. how about we play with x toy, read x book) the answer is 'no', if I say 'what do you want to do?' DD will say 'don't know', if I offer 2 choices DD will say 'don't want that/those' or 'no' and wail quietly.
DD has also started throwing toys (e.g. every piece in her lego box, individually, to a different part of the room).
She like being thrown around, in the air, physical play - I can't keep that up for long but it does make her laugh. She loves being outdoors and the park, btu if I do something like e.g. kick a football, that is not a direct instruction given by DD she will angrily shout 'no mummy' and sometimes come up to hit me. So I sometimes just have to stand there feeling like I'm not interacting with her at all for fear of her reaction if I do. If there are other children outside and she can play with them, DD is much happier and not like this.
On the days when I'm at home, I want to be enjoying precious time with DD, but I feel like I’m spending all day trying not to strangle her, hit her over the head with something very hard, which I confess would be satisfying in that once instant (joke in poor taste MN but not too far from the truth). Just dealing with her is driving me into a blind rage at times.
Is this just par for the course with a toddler? I barely see anyone else with a child and have no idea. Tried HV, not much use. Tried asking for counselling/therapy on the NHS.. hahaha. There's noone (noone, noone, noone) else who can come to help me with DD. I get a break at work but there are other stresses there. I don't get chance to go to clubs and meet other parents due to the work schedule.
I can put cartoons on but don’t like to sit her in front of them for long and it’s only a slight reprieve.
What can I do, by myself and for myself, and DD, without outside assistance? How do I stop feeling so bloody angry (and acting in anger)?
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Behaviour/development
2.5 year old need help
namechange405 · 02/05/2016 14:30
You sound at the end of your tether! It is very hard, especially if you don't get a break. I hated this phase, but it really really does pass. what helped me a little bit was to think of DS more scientifically, as a 'developing human', rather than as 'my child deliberately trying to drive me crazy'.
I think it also helps to avoid any big reactions to behaviour, so just a mild, bored-but-stern 'no, we don't hit people', and you provide food but do not make any fuss about whether they do or do not eat it. (and it's a notoriously picky age for food, especially at dinner when they are tired, so keep your expectations low.)
i found it really hard to enjoy this stage, but I always felt better if I could muster up enough energy at least once each day to make DS laugh out loud, even if just chasing/tickling type activity.
it's tough - I don't envy you, but this too shall pass!
I also skim-read a bit I'm afraid as it was rather a loooong post Op 
but tbh it all sounds reeeally normal for her age - DD is 3 and went through pretty much all of it in varying degrees!
Most of it I let ride, for eg eating - DD is a rubbish eater and had been for a little while, I just don't force it and don't offer anything else is all. Have recently started giving kiddy vitamins as well which makes me feel a bit better!
The changing the rules thing - "stop it, mummy, don't do that" kind of thing really doesn't bother me, and in fact she still does it quite often (for example telling me to stop singing/dancing/farting about our whatever but she may have a point! 
), I just indulge it, much easier to be told what to do than told off I find!
Hitting, kicking, etc, I came down on pretty quickly and firmly and although she still does it occasionally if she thinks it's funny to get a reaction (when getting dressed, for eg) I know exactly how to knock it on the head, if you'll excuse the pun! What works for her is direct sanction wrt whatever activity is coming up, say smacking at bedtime will be met with "do that again and no bedtime story", and meaning it. On actual fact I think I have a pretty good firm voice as I've actually never had to act on it with that one! If she did it while we were out somewhere fit her it would be Do that again and we're going straight home... You get the gist.
We are coming out the other side of it (the boundary testing that is, as that's what i think this is, in essence) now but it's still there, on and off, I just think I'm getting better at knowing what works, and crucially, minimising my emotional reaction to it? I have totally found that the calmer and firmer I am, the better she responds....
I would definitely recommend meditation!!
Good luck, Op, it'll work I promise!! X
Thank you everyone
And sorry for the very long post
We've had a good afternoon, once DD woke up -
One thing she DD do is sleep really, really well (as in, straight through the night 9-10 hours, and half the afternoon)
Once she woke up today she seemed in a great mood, and with some time outside even better. Then for tea she decided to eat all the (veggie) sausages which was really suprising. Nothing else mind, just all the sausages (I'm on a toddler-enforced vegetable diet this eve)..
Might have to try the no-snack thing, but anticipate some major meltdowns if I do that and not sure I can do it and not give in
Singing songs - that's one of the things that makes her angry, if I sing the first line of a nursery rhyme DD will often shout 'no, mummy!' and come to hit me if I continue. Which is sad, because I'd kind of like to sit around singing with her!
Maybe I'm making it sound worse than it is, there are some good times too, she can be funny and sweet, and I love to see her laugh. It's the power struggles I hate, plus not having someone to take turns with so I can at least run walk away sometimes.
Long Division puts how I described as Emotional Detachment better - raising a mini human, that's exactly how I try to see it! In my head I was thinking, should I compare it to training a puppy? But obvs that didn't sound right! To be frank, as she's developed and her language had progressed another thing that actually seems to work (for both of us!) is Properly explaining why/why not in a calm no-nonsense tone...
At first I started doing it to help me regain my calm and control - almost thinking out loud, iyswim - but found that she actually seemed to be listening, or at least not doing the thing she wasn't supposed to be doing! obvs I don't do this all the probably wouldn't have time to draw breath if I did but definitely found it provided a Cooling Off opportunity for everyone.
And Don't worry, it doesn't sound negative at all - we are all in truth stumbling along as noone has a crystal ball to see if they turn out OK in 20yrs... I'm hoping if I have confidence in my ability to train this little person, and balance the battles with love and fun, it Will turn out OK!!
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