am I making her a horrid brat???

[MrsRV]

DD1 is 2.8 months... I think she hates me. She's constantly doing things that are naughty lately knowing full well she'll be punished! I don't know if it's due to her being ill recently, or tired, or jealousy of 7mo sister or lack of exercise (due to her & DD2 being poorly & it being freezing) or is it diet...? or is she just going to be a bloody horrible child????

Impossible to tell at this age.

I don't know about anybody else's kids but mine were like dogs in that they had to be walked twice a day. If she's cooped up and a lot of your attention is on your poorly one.. isn't any kind of attention better than none.. even if it is being punished?

Sounds like you have had a day similar to me - DD is 3.2yo and usually pretty good when we eat out - will sit quietly and we can chat. Today however she transformed into an evil goblin version of Verruca Salt in front of my eyes. I think I must have stared bug eyed a bit because I was expecting her head to rotate 360 degrees and green vomit to shoot out... She was literally throwing things off the table onto the floor, smacking her hands on the table and screaming "No" at the top of her voice, puce in the face and tears streaming; all because I couldn't stick back on a 'door' to a cardboard box that had ripped off! I tried everything I could think off - ignore, smile, explain why I couldn't, took her into the loo to try to hug and calm her while explaining she couldn't behave like that and we would have to leave if she continued- thought that one had worked until we got back out there - no! I told her I was going to throw the box away as it was winding her up, which poss made things worse, I then said we would have to leave if she didn't sit on her bottom RIGHT NOW and calm down and eat her lunch. At this point she threw her lunch on the floor and mine with it. I was mortified. Grabbed her coat and bag and marched out with her trailing behind still screaming "Noooo!". I picked her up to cuddle her and she viciously pulled my hair! Marched straight to the bus station and got her onto the bus (carried her like sack of spuds as she was unwilling to say the least!) and got us home. We had only been out of the house for 40mins!
I think it took me about 2 hours to properly calm down. I felt I had to keep explaining why we were home and why we couldn't do all of the fun things planned, to ensure it had sunk in. I also had the idea I had lost the battle between lovely girl and spoilt brat. It really worries me as I don't often see that side to her, but it is really nasty! It can't be that at under 5 they have these traits set, I am sure it is down partly to encouraging good behaviour.
I think consistency is key. They can't be allowed to get away with small things if you have said no or they will push for bigger things. I told her on the bus how usually I am so proud of her, but today her behaviour was appalling and she needed to know that I wasn't going to let that happen. Tonight I also mentioned it (I felt I needed to reinforce it) and confirmed that Santa will also be watching.
Stay strong - tomorrow she will probably be sweetness and light and you will wonder what you were so worried about!

A child of that age can NOT be horrible. Everything they do is a reaction. At that age being told no means they will stop about 75% of the time momentarily. They do not understand no means forever.
If they are doing a bad behaviour it could be to get your attention ( negative attention is better than no attention) , they could be frustrated, bored , jealous or pent up.
Only you will be able to work out the reason.

All children have to push the boundaries to find out where they are and how logical and consistent they are.

Some children will find out that, if they push hard enough, the boundary moves and they get what they want. That just gives them an incentive to push harder, scream louder, fight for longer in the future.

Other children scream, shout and push for longer enough to work out exactly where they stand and that pushing achieves nothing. They generally give up pushing although they all have to try it out again now and then as their level of understanding changes or just to make sure that the boundaries haven't changed.

OP, if you deal with it like Lion did today, your DD will not be a horrible child because she will know that the unpleasant behaviour isn't worth the effortas it doesn't get her what she wants.