My 3yo is driving me to the brink of insanity.
She does not listen to anything or anyone. I’ve also been told that her blatant ignorance is becoming a problem at preschool as well as at home.
Ask her to do the simplest of tasks takes at least 10 times of asking, escalating to telling. It’s like talking to a brick wall. And then when she finally realises I’m not budging and she will have to do the task, she scoffs at me like a stroppy teenager! She is constantly getting out of bed, mainly very early in the mornings - I’m talking 4:30am early - and going into her baby brothers room and waking him. I tell her every night, numerous times “do not go in your brothers room when you wake up”. And yet she does it every fucking day, resulting in a very grumpy, overtired baby. She has a groclock in her room which she consistently ignores, we’ve tried a baby gate on the door, but she just stands at the gate a yells which obviously still wakes the baby.
With the lack of listening and just doing whatever the fucks she wants, I’ve tried:
- positive attention - ie ignoring bad behaviour and overly praising good behaviour = doesn’t give a fuck.
- naughty step after a countdown from 5-1 = doesn’t give a fuck
- removing toys/tv/activities as punishment = doesn’t give a fuck
- Yelling at her = doesn’t give a fuck
- Reward chart/jar = doesn’t give a fuck
I’m literally at my wits end, and completely exhausted by her behaviour. Just sat in the front room and cried after I’d finally got them both down to bed last night. I feel like I’m busting my proverbial balls all day everyday to take care of them (majority of the time by myself as daddy is in the military and away all the time), and she just treats me like shit
Is this normal? Am I overreacting by feeling so upset about it all?
3 was AWFUL. It gets better. My only suggestion (which you probably do already) is to tell her what to do when she wakes up, rather than what not to do. Otherwise the last thing she hears at night is ".....go in your brother's room when you wake up".
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