I've messed up with 3 year old

I have 3 DC and my 3rd, a girl also, sounds very much like yours.

My older two (girl and boy) needed a firm telling off on the very rare occasion but otherwise were very placid and easy children.

My third is very emotional, strong willed and as a toddler/young child would scream and tantrum. She was also an angel at school.

I learned after a while that my previous parenting style of telling off just wouldn't work with her. Nor would any kind of thinking step. Meeting her like this would escalate her emotions even further. It was very hard to resist labelling her 'stubborn' or 'difficult '. But it's important not to. I'm the 'stubborn' one in my family because I was as a child but am actually now the most laid-back of my siblings. It's an unfair judgement that can linger.

I always did (and do) love 3rd dc so much, she is an absolute delight, kind and thoughtful, intelligent and creative.

Eventually I realised that what she needed from me in her high emotional states was empathy and calmness. It didn't mean that I would agree with her or let her behave badly but it required me to calmly respond to her (even if she was screaming), whilst also remaining firm in whatever the boundary was or the consequence she'd need to face.
I would also offer her a cuddle and a chance to sit quietly with me holding hands for a few minutes before we addressed it again if she needed to calm down. She really enjoyed this and it made her more open to facing the consequence (like saying sorry to a sibling etc.).

She massively improved, her behaviour has become so much better and she is very kind to others and good at regulating her emotions now. She still likes to sit with me.

Sorry for the ramble, I know sometimes parenting can be frustrating. But just remember she is very young and needs your help to deal with her big emotions.

This is totally out of line.

It sounds like your DD needs to spend a lot less time with your in laws as they undermining you as her Mum and stopping her from learning that the unacceptable behaviour is unacceptable.

It may be that she has additional needs but her not having any boundaries at your in laws is not ok.

FFS! 🙄 You and I don’t know the OP or her child but I’d put money on the fact that @Neitherherenorthere1loves her daughter enormously, she just doesn’t like the behaviour right now!
Clearly doesn’t like her child …. jeez

If this is your experience, your choice of nursery is to blame. My DGC spends two long days at nursery and there's an excellent balance of learning, play and rest. It's completely natural for a 3 year old to be tired and cranky as the end of the day approaches as at that age simply existing gives them a lot to process. There isn't any difference in behaviour at the end of her nursery days from her home days, other than on the home days she can get a little bored as it's impossible to replicate the variety of stimulation a good nursery offers.

💯 this ^

It sounds like you were taught that being sad isn’t okay, but being angry is. You’re likely inadvertently teaching your daughter the same (by demonstrating that it’s not okay to cry, but it is okay to shout).

As others have said, if you don’t change your approach she’ll struggle to learn how to regulate her own emotions and may develop the same pattern. It’s worth considering if that might be happening with you too (you feel stressed and sad, but the only emotion you feel safe communicating is anger).

It’s important to recognise that you didn’t choose to learn these patterns. The good thing is that you clearly love your daughter and with support we can all change our unhelpful patterns

Obviously that’s just one thought and may be well off the mark. Whatever’s going on, I’d recommend trying to speak to a professional if you can afford it (I’d look for a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist or BACP accredited therapist, as there’s a lot of unqualified people selling themselves as therapists).

Can I ask, what do you mean 100% present? Sounds like bs from a shit parenting book.
Will she be allowed to shower and go to the toilet, cook a meal, try to read a book every once in a while?
If you never had a high need baby or an SEN child who masks around others but hell breaks loose at home, you would not be spouting such nonsense.

And who do you recommend looks after them? The flower fairies?

If what you have to say isn’t relevant to the OP then why say it? Do you enjoy trying to make working parents feel guilty?

First of all it's normal for her to be worse with you as you're her safe person.

Secondly, pick your battles. Hitting, destroying not ok. Making a mess in the garden with water ok. Eating toast while sitting on the floor and making crumbs fine.

Thirdly, give loads of positive affirmation and praise.

Fourthly do lots of activities with her to build your bond.

Never shout.distract and redirect.

I am pro naughty step if applied consistently. Sit with her and talk through what was wrong when she has done something unacceptable like hitting.
Hug and start over.

Not relevant to the OP but poor little kids, doing a 10 hour day. Their heads stuffed full of the National Curiculum.
No wonder they cry.

I think her behaviour is a cry for your attention. Presumably if she’s good you’re cracking on with something else? I think you need to shower her with love and 1-1 attention and be 100% present and lots of praise. Start on a weekend day rather than after nursery when she’s tired. Think of it as building rapport.

I have only read your comments but I think you need to step away and look at everything as this setup isn’t working. She’s really young and you’re really busy and she might have additional needs and she has many different caregivers with different expectations… it’s a lot. Can you pull back on anything in your own life to calm things down a bit?

my daughter is autistic and this is the age it started being obvious as it presents really differently in girls. She has always been perfect at daycare and school. Scarily perfect as it turns out as she’s too anxious to do anything to even go close to misbehaving. Masks all day and is shattered at home. She feels safe with me so I get the worst of it.

I think you need to find times to do things together. My daughter needs loads of outside time to reset herself so we would spend a couple hours at the park every single weekend. Not a lot of activities, lots of time to unwind in the evening. I get that it’s super hard - I work full time as does my husband and we are immigrants so it’s just us - but it has to happen or we all suffer.

For what it's worth, I've studied (only a bit!) of attachment theory and parents are allowed to make mistakes and invariably will, it's whether you are able to repair the rupture, i.e explain why you were angry and upset with her and then provide comfort and reassurance that it's her behaviour you were upset with and not her as a person.

So my armchair psychology is this:

Her crying is overstimulation. The reason I think that is because it's after leaving daycare. She can finally relax with her safe person (you).

Kids will always be the worst with their safe person. They know you love them regardless and they don't need to put on an act.

I personally found my highly emotional son works best with positive reinforcement rather than penalties, so I make a habit of thanking him when he does something good, even if it is "expected" behaviour. For example - "thank you for helping me take the trash out, I really appreciate it." As he's gotten older I've changed what I thank him for (it's natural at this point). So it'll be me randomly telling him how proud I am of him for X or Y, or how I noticed him do X & Y. When he cries about something and hes trying to talk i cant understand him, so ill offer a hug and tell him I can't understand what he's saying and when he's calmed down a bit we can talk about it. He's getting much better at regulating himself.

As an example of overstim at school: My son (i think he was 5) just burst into tears one day after school while he was at his in-home daycare (2nd mum really) over, seemingly, nothing. Shed msgd me about it and when I picked him up I asked him what that was about. He said he holds it in all day but he can only hold so much. Little things had upset him but he won't cry at school but he feels safe with me and Mel (2nd mum/daycare/friend).

Also, i raise my voice sometimes. I can't say it's something I'm proud of, but I'm also not NOT proud of it. I've explained to my son that if I've had to repeat myself or I feel like he's not listening I get frustrated (on the spectrum myself). Its normally stuff like yesterday when I'd asked him to do something and he'd half-assed it bc he had better things to do. Pissed me right off. Or he caught an attitude with me and I called him on it. When he'd calmed himself down (he was angry at not going for a bike ride - in sick and can't right now) he apologized for his attitude. He's a really great kid.

Anyway, he is very aware he's loved but that I'm not perfect and neither is he. Im goofy and weird and make him laugh and play board games and take him shopping, or to the park or friends houses. He's aware the angry times are an anomaly. In fact he's asked me before if I'm having a moment (forget what it was exactly but I was being irrational) and I couldn't help but laugh that my 8 yo had noticed and correctly identified it. And my response was "yes, yes I am". He laughed, I laughed, everyone was fine.

Shouting often comes from a place of tiredness and overwhelm, definitely don’t beat yourself up about it.

Well done you for trying generally to correct misbehaviour and instil some discipline and boundaries. That is sadly lacking nowadays.

I am appalled at behaviour I witness as a parent, and seeing other parents standing there saying or doing absolutely nothing. I’ve had parents outright lie about their child hurting mine, lying and blaming another child who had done nothing. Obviously now have little to do with them. No, you tell you child to stop hurting other people, give them a consequence and apologise to the child they hurt, not lie and try and get an innocent child in trouble? Disgraceful.

Whilst eating lunch at a friend’s we couldn’t believe how their kids are allowed to behave. Up and down like yo-yos, no please or thank you, shouting and screaming, jumping over sofas and trashing their house the whole day. Ours tried to copy, we obviously stopped them with a ‘no, we don’t do that in somebody else’s house’, they were like ‘oh it’s fine, we don’t mind’…well I do mind! I don’t want my own well behaved children dropping to your low standards.

Stick with it OP, you’ll have far better behaved children for it. If more parents said ‘no’ and ‘stop’ firmly and with authority, backed up by consequences, this world would be a better place.

Unless your in laws spend as much time with her as you do, how they treat her when they see her isn't going to counteract how you do, so there's no point looking to blame them. Sounds to me like she's a fairly typical 3.5 year old, and you're exhausted because you're getting to do all the tough times that trigger challenging behaviour (when she needs to do things she doesn't want to and/or is tired) by yourself. If there's no way of sharing the bad times with you H (he could have been there this morning not at the gym maybe?) then I think you'll just have to grit your teeth, and put her behaviour down to the circumstances rather than taking it personally and wait this stage out.

Go easy on yourself. You reached breaking point and verbally told her so.
You’re going to get to that point sometimes because she’s chosen you to be the one she releases all her feelings on.
Apologise to her for snapping, explain that it is very hard on you to have to hear the crying and tantruming as often as you do and you both need to work on having better ways of expressing yourselves.
Cuddle and move on. X

Forget it OP. If you feel it's problematic, see a therapist.

3 year olds are very irritating and demanding.

Not on Mumsnet 😆

This is what she is trying to do. She’s asking for advice and “do better” is rather vague: any better ideas?

Some sanctimonious cunts on this thread