My 3 year old screams none stop.

[Lafoosa]

I'm at my wits end at the moment, I'm a single parent to 3 kids 5, 3 and 16m, their dad is deadbeat and maybe calls them once a month, never sees them.
I don't have any help from family or friends.

My 3 year old is an utter nightmare recently, absolutely everything sets her off into the most horrendous tantrums. All day everyday is constant screaming. Screaming because I asked her to play, screaming,because she wanted the purple plate, yellow plate, etc, because she dropped a toy, because she wants tv, because I paid attention to one of her sisters for 5 seconds. It's not just a little tantrum where she's fine again in 2 minutes, it's horrifically loud screaming, kicking herself all over the place, throwing things, and absolutely nothing ever makes her stop unless she gets exactly what she wants every time, which is just ridiculous and I'm not going to give her everything she wants constantly.

She won't sleep at night, she takes hours and hours to finally fall asleep and then she wakes up more than a newborn and won't go back to sleep unless I get her back to sleep every time.

I can't go out anywhere with her, I can't do anything, I can't even get 5 seconds break from it at night because it's constant.

I can't do housework because she kicks off at me for not paying attention to her while I hey and do it. I can't even eat my own food because she has a meltdown that I'm not giving it all to her.

I've tried talking to her calmly and trying to find out why she's doing it, most of the time she doesn't give any clear answer. I've tried doing 1/1 activities with her, I've tried time out, earlier bedtime, later bedtime, no TV, and obviously it's not the right thing to do but I have ended up loosing my rag multiple times and shouting at her because I can't cope with her anymore.

I'm not looking for anyone to slam my parenting, so if you're only going to be rude please don't bother commenting. I need some help, I need a way to get her to stop doing this all the time. It's too much and I
can't cope with her anymore.

It sounds as though you're really struggling @Lafoosa and I bet you've tried all of the regular parenting techniques and none of them work?

In your shoes I'd ring the HV, tell her that you need her to assess DD urgently using the Ages & Stages Social & Emotional Assessment 36 months.

I'd also ask her to refer DD fir a hearing test.

How does she score on this speech & language progress checker? If it says "you answered no to some important questions, I'd ask the HV to refer DD to SLT too.

Is DD in Nursery and are they reporting any problems?

@SiouxsieSiouxStiletto Her speech is on track luckily. My 5yo needed SALT because she had a pretty bad speech delay.
I have wondered about the possibility of ADHD though. I haven't noticed any issues with her hearing at all, she can hear me open a packet from across the whole house 😅

She scored on track with that test.

She's not in nursery anymore after we moved as I thought we'd have a break until September. When she was though they didn't have any problems, and she's not like this if my dad occasionally babysits.

She can't seem to regulate how loud she is I've noticed. She's SO loud all the time even when she's not having a tantrum, all of her play involves shouting or screeching, and if I ask her to be quieter she won't. It's not that she can't because I've seen her do it, she'd just rather shout.
And she's usually bouncing off the walls, which I don't know if that's a normal 3yo thing of a sign of something else.

Since mu eldest has ASD I don't know what's normal behaviour because my 5yo has never had typical behaviour for her age.

As ASD tends to run in families, I'd definitely ask the HV to do the Social & Emotional Assessment I linked to

@SiouxsieSiouxStiletto There are a few of my family members with ASD, ADHD, etc. But I haven't really seen any autism signs in my 3yo, ADHD definitely. I just need to book an appointment with the GP so they can refer her for assessment. It was such a pain doing that with my eldest as her ASD because they refused to listen to me for years and just left me struggling. She's still not even been diagnosed, but school, nursery, the HV, portage, SALT and every other team we've had involved also don't have much doubt she's autistic. The referral is just taking an absolute age.