Clingy, loud and demanding 2 year old!!

[fluffandnonsense]

My DD who has recently turned 2 is amazing, she's bright, funny, beautiful and very clever but from day 1 she has been so demanding. Even from being a newborn she never went down for naps, screamed if anyone else held her and fed every 40 minutes day and night. She didn't sleep through properly until she was past 13 months and even then we have 2 hourly battles every night to get her to sleep. All of which I have coped with and tried not to go too crazy! But even now her behaviour is so hard to deal with. She crys a lot. She walks round the house screaming constantly and follows me around doing it. She will scream and cry mummy, mummy, mummy repeatedly. She is only happy if I give her 100% of my attention and wants me to pick her up carry her all the time which ATM is hard as I am 11 weeks pregnant, feeling very sickly and she is the size of a 4 year old!!!

I just feel exhausted by her constantly. My DS was nothing like this and much easier going. Her Dad is great but she screams for me the whole time she is with her. I'm finding it very hard not to get angry at her as age is basically in my face the whole time she is with me!

I feel like she has been such hard work and feel like surely we are due for her to grow into a new more pleasurable stage! Has anyone had any experience of this? Can help me handle it or even shine a light at the end of this very dark tunnel??

Anyone??

Mine were as you describe but both had dairy and soya intolerances plus reflux so were in discomfort. Once we got meds and stripped out the foods they were much better.

Id rule out anything physical - get her ears checked, consider her diet (is she windy, loose stools, craving particular food), is she getting enough sleep?

I second what creatureretorts just said! Eliminate things one by one! My son was around that age when he started to be unbearable! Nothing wrong with him as far as I could tell. Then when I looked back I realised his behaviour changed when he went onto just cows milk from toddler milk. He was having both for a while then a month on just cows milk. A bad month! I stopped it and two days later he was back to being an angel and has been ever since. I don't think he has an intolerance as such but really changed his behaviour, I read into it a little more and something to do with the hormones in cows milk! Worth a try, good luck

Thank for your responses. She eats very little dairy already, drinks no milk and has only occasional yogurts so I doubt it's that. Plus she was the same while exclusively breastfeeding. She suffers with constipation but is in medication and its under control. I don't think it's anything physical like ear ache etc as she's been like this since she was born. She does get worse when she's ill so I can usually pin point times when she needs to see GP easily.

It's not like she's an unhappy child it's just that she's very very demanding.

If she's constipated it could be dietary causing that.

Maybe try and be more positive with her. Raise specific good things and give her loads of attention for it - she's after attention good or bad. If she's learnt that demanding gets a reaction then she will keep doing it.

Also mine were both EBF and reacted via my milk. Didn't take much after I'd stopped to cause trouble. Ds, who's 3, has to be careful how much he has in yoghurts and cheese. Milk is a no.

My dd is 2.7 and has had very demanding periods. I now have a 7monyh old ds and can't believe how chilled he is in comparison!

My dd sounds quite like yours in some ways, although luckily she has always been a good sleeper. She went through phases of totally refusing to have anything to do with my poor heartbroken dh!

When I was pregnant with ds I realised that she would have to learn quite quickly once he arrived that I couldn't pander to her constantly. It is quite easy to get in to the cycle of just doing whatever they want to avoid the fallout.

So I started doing things like if she asked for something I would purposely say 'yes, I will you a drink when I have finished this washing up' or 'after I've been to the loo' etc. if I wasn't actually doing anything when she asked for something then I would try and delay responding by making something up that I had to do. If she wanted to be picked up I would do the same but then I would make a point of finishing off what I was doing and giving her a really big cuddle.

She actually loves the big sister role and now always wants to help with things. She is much better now which is probably a combination of having no choice but to toughen up and also growing up a bit. She still has her moments but is less clingy.

She also had constant things niggling her.... She got two of her back molars through, had various bad colds, had a couple of ear infections etc. They all caused her to be mega grumpy. But for the last couple of months she has been great.

So basically I would say just start stalling a bit before responding to her and gradually make the response a bit longer sometimes. I'm sure she will get there, it's a tough age for them, they are still so small but we expect so much.

Good luck with the new one!