to find parenting so damn hard??

[ScarletLadyOfTheNight01]

I'm really struggling at the moment. I have an 18 month old DD and this past couple of weeks she's been a nightmare. She seems so angry and frustrated. She's learning to talk and we had some communication/frustration issues a few months ago. I came here (well not AIBU, but this site) for advice and followed it and things seemed to get better for a while.

We've all had a cold (nasty sore throaty one) but I KNOW she's over this now and I just feel helpless. She's spent literally all day today screaming at me and having wild thrashing tantrums. Nothing I do is good enough. I've played games with her, taken her for walks, she's eaten and slept well. I've been on my own today as DH has work (new job) and I'm really struggling to cope with her. He's working again tomorrow and if it's like today I don't know how I'll manage.

Sorry I'm being silly...I see women cope with far more children and children with SEN and they are admirable...I don't know how they do it.

Yanbu. My lovely DD smacked me in the face today because I washed her hair! THe little horror!

Please will someone tell me if or when my soon to be 6 yr old dd will use those flappy things on either side of her head and listen to me? Please?!

Oh God it is hard. I may regret this or have a load of horror ahread (probably do) but we found 16-20m really hideous. That was when we had most of the full on thrashing on head-banging tantrums. Things calmed down a bit after that and from 2+ she has actually been pretty good. Still knackering, and we are currently going through a continuous 'What's this? What you doing? Where Daddy going? What that man doing? What that lady wearing?' phase but nothing like the horrors of 18m.

Hardest. Job. Ever.
Currently sat in the back garden, in the dark, nursing a large smoking myself silly and sobbing due to spending the last 4 hours trying to get my overtired and hysterical 4 month old dd to sleep.
Totally agree with *lastyearsmodel" about that line being genius

'Never compare the inside of your life with the outside of other people's' MrsTerryPratchett has it spot on!!

YADNBU! It's bloody relentless really, I've got 4.4yr DS and 1.3 yr DD. I feel as though i could cheerfully strangle one or both of them almost every day (I wouldnt though) - but one peep in at them when they're sleeping or playing nicely together 'resets' my patience iyswim. 'its a phase' and MN help me

OP - within the next few months some friend of yours will cry on your shoulder and say "What do I do? You always seem so together and like you're taking it all in your stride", and you will . Everyone makes it up as they go along - look at me, I freely admit I have no feckin clue - and thinks that other people are doing it better.

My best advice is not to spend the day alone with an 18 month old. That way madness lies - go and hang with some grownups and let her do her own thing. I often think my mistake with DD1 was to spend too much time trying to play with her, it drove both of us mad, esp around the 18 month mark.

Echoing others - this too shall pass, this too shall pass, repeat until fade.

Just reread what I posted and realised that it sounded like I was advising you to leave your child alone like she was 18 not 18 months - sorry, obvs I mean let her play IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT NEAR YOU whilst you have a cuppa and a chat with another parent. Soz.

YADNBU

I find parenting, particularly when they're small fucking horrendous!

The lack of communication is so wearing, I actually prefer my oldest now they've hit the teenage years, at least I can work out what they want.

You seem to have lots of better suggestions than I could ever come up with, so hope that goes well. Just wanted to agree that sometimes it is utter shit. Its tiring and relentless and there is little thanks. I used to go and scream in the shower or occasionally have tantrums of my own .

Just know (in my opinion anyway) it will get easier. My Mil is always on about how you should think of the pain of the birth and how bloody endless that seemed and realise 'this too shall pass'. She has 12 children! So worth a try.

Am having a flashback!!

Ds1 largely bypassed the terrible toddler stage - he once flung himself down in a supermarket cos I wouldn't buy cake, and I advised all the tutting old ladies to just ignore him. That was the only toddler incident I could recall - Job's a good un!! aren't I brill?!

Then I had ds2 - Ha!

he still wasn't that outrageous really, but I remember very clearly one incident - he was about 2 - he'd just woken up from a pre-lunch nap. I offered him orange juice instead of apple juice - and the world fell apart. he howled, he raged, I cuddled him, - he bit me. I ignored him - he hoofed around the house after me, throwing himself in my path, to rage at life...

Was JUST getting him to calm down some 3 hours later, and it's time to pick ds1 up from school - so have to get his shoes on, into car etc - rage accelerated - am standing in the playground with this two foot tall Jeremy Paxman raving away in his pushchair...

"awww he's not happy - whats wrong?" coo the other mothers..

"I gave him orange juice instead of apple juice.. for lunch" I trail off lamely.

They calculate the time differential in their heads - realise this is a situation beyond small talk, pale significantly, and bow out...

I take Ds1 to his friends house for tea - pick him up at 6pm. Ds2 is STILL raving, ranting, and hurling himself round like a dervish, whilst I try to fold him into the car seat. He bites me. Again. he is completely beyond himself

Six hours later this is.... after orange-juice gate.... Well - I'd never seen owt like it - ever. I wanted to cry - what the fuck was I doing being a parent? It's shite - I'm shite! I felt out of my depth.....

It only really lasted another few months, and nowt ever got that bad again - But sweet baby jesus and the four horsemen of the apocalypse - I felt all kinds of crap. After 2 and a half though - he was pretty much rational and easygoing ...

He's 9 now, and still easygoing, apart from those 6 months. Very very occasionally, when the moon is in saggitarious, I still have to remind him that me asking him to put his coat on after school cos it's raining doesn't constitute an abuse of his human rights...

If the nursing falls through, am considering a job in hostage negotiations..

Oh, I've SO appreciated reading your stories. Just knowing I'm not alone helps more than you know. Lots of great advice, thanks ladies!

I must have jinxed myself as I disappeared last night because she decided she wanted to be awake and then wouldn't settle until gone midnight in our bed...

The result is a very tired girl today...but she has been very cuddly and cute.

I completely agree with the "staying in all day" thing. Won't be doing that again. I just didn't really have anything to do yesterday.

Thanks again for your replies, it really helped!

Parenting is hard. Just as you get used to one phase the next starts!

The hardest thing - with absolutely no thanks. It's very easy to get sucked into the thankless minutae of everyday, the repetition, the boredom...

With regard to "everyone is doing great" - that's nonsense - you just have find a friend who can talk really honestly too. I always found that if I admitted I was having a really hard time then other people 'fessed up too. And sharing holidays with other families is a revelation - you always come away feeling better that your parenting skills are no worse than anyone else's, other people lose their patience / temper too, everyone has bad days / looong stages. :o

When mine were little I sort of fixed in my head that I liked the bedtime stage - we'd managed to make it through to the end of the day. If it had been a particularly bad day we often started bath much earlier and I got in with them (they, ahem, still like this even now they are 7 and 10...!). I suppose it was about trying to reconnect when you felt you'd been at loggerheads. It didn't stop me sobbing quietly after they'd fallen asleep while I looked at their angelic sleeping faces and thought about what a bad job I'd done that day / how badly I'd handled things etc.

Oh OP, everyone feels like that sometimes. As my mate (who has 2) says 'only mad people have kids'.
We had a day when my DS, 20 months, threw a day long wobbler because I wouldn't let him eat his food using a little yellow plastic shovel, the rage had only just started to subside when an other meal came along and stoked it back up again. I'd sort of blanked that out until I read Pixwix's tale of tiny wroth :)

We also went through a phase where he shouted pretty much all the time to be out in the garden and went into melt down if he wasn't getting out. He shouted at breakfast, he shouted in the bath, he shouted and bawled everywhere we went during the day, lunch, dinner and bed time. He even shouted in the wee small hours. To make matters worse it was during that spell of really bad weather we had over the Jubilee so we couldn't take him out or he would have been washed away. We tried taking him out to show him it was horrible, but he loved it

DS is lovely and I'm so glad I have him but sometimes its like trying to look after a 2 foot imp of Satan with a Napoleon complex.

Signing helped us too.
My dd is 2 and gets frustrated a lot. Sometimes (especially when I'm tired) I just have to leave the room, and tell myself 'She's 2. She will stop eventually.'
Often taking her out and letting her run around for a couple of hours works a treat. Even if it's just in a field with a ball, or the garden with her trike thing. To be honest, some days when dh gets home after a long day at work, he takes over until bedtime :)

Itchy your friend has it spot on, this is something I seem to say to myself daily at the moment.

I have a very headstrong little diva at 2 yrs 10 months & ds at nearly 9 months, I spend most of my day explaining to dd why she can't do exactly as she pleases whilst trying to occupy an increasingly frustrated little boy who would rather like to be mobile but can't quite figure out how to crawl-it's such fun

I'm laughing at some of the stories here! You ladies have made me feel so much better about parenting, and the reality of it.

For me it is 90% hard work and drugery and 10% fun and cuteness. And they are lovely children honestly, it's just together they just fight and squabble all the time.

Makes me laugh when other mothers tell me, and even those that run toddler groups, tell me that I seem so together and a brilliant mum who is relaxed and calm. I just look at them in disbelief, because it is so not true. I shout and scream at my 3.5yr old when he is naughty, lose my patience a lot and really struggle through the day when I am on my own with them. I lose the will to live and want to be at work, all by 9am on my days off with them. I do calm down a lot once I am out of the house and we are doing something though, so maybe people see me at my best at the toddler groups or when I meet up with other mums.

Sometimes babies seem angry, but it's just because all they can do is make noises. It's hard for them to control their voice and breathing, so perhaps she sounds angrier than she really is. They communicate in other ways anyway, so don't focus on verbal language.

Try to learn about child development, someone here already said 'it's a phase' - well babies are all about phases. They go from one to the next, to the next. By the time you've learnt where they're at, they've gone to the next. The passing toys to you phase is just one of many vital parts of their development - it's connecting, communicating and she is learning about cause and effect - she can give something to you, you respond, the thing goes away, then it comes back, etc etc. It's all about learning. Then one day she'll do something else, like say 'thank you' when you pass it back to her - or throw it across the room to see where it lands, whichever, but whatever she does, remember that all she's doing is learning how the world works.

You sound a little unconfident about your abilities, OP. That's completely natural but sometimes what babies need is a confident Mum to show them that the world is safe and you will keep it that way. Sometimes that's at the root of separation anxiety / sleeping through the night. You've seen the parenting programmes probably, but essentially baby needs to learn that their bed is a safe place and Mummy will always be there in the morning.

It is OK to struggle, it is OK to be tired, emotional, crying, not particularly like your child.

Your child is well fed, warm and looked after. Do as others have sugested, take her out, meet other people and when she goes to bed have a .

Thanks everyone.

I'm not that confident a person, so it stands to reason that would spill over into my parenting I guess.

I don't think it's rubbing off on her too much though. She's very confident in new situations and when I take her toddler groups she loves it. She dives right in and doesn't cling to me at all, so I must be doing something right. She used to sleep in her cot no problem, I could put her down and walk away and she'd just go to sleep with no fuss. That all changed at 10 months when we moved home. I don't agree with controlled crying, so I'm doing gradual retreat and we're getting there. I'd rather do a gentler form of sleep training. I can't stand to listen to her upset as it gets me upset and just makes things worse. I don't have a problem if people want to do it at all...it's just not for us.

Today was a much better day. We took her for a walk round the park with the dog and she toddled about for ages...I think it helped tire her out. DH ended up not having to work today so he's been helping, which has made it easier.

Thanks so much for all your kind words. I really was at my wit's end last night, but reading through this has really helped.