I am currently at my wits end with my (almost) 4 year old girl. She turns 4 on Monday. She has recently started screaming and shouting often when going to bed and sometimes for hours in the middle of the night. It's for no apparent reason. I take her to bed nicely, read her a story, have a little chat and then I see her face turn. It's like she's possessed. Her eyes glaze over and she just starts saying nonsense to me. The other day it was "I want to have my lunch at nursery". Sounds simple enough but there was no response to this question. She just trapped me in her room. From there she just spirals but it can be anything. Last night it was fixing her bedding which she is obsessed with. She tucked the bottom of her duvet over the end of her mattress but then her face changed and I counted over 30 times that she did it on repeat. She just kept looking at me with a glazed over look as if to say "I'm doing this and there's nothing you can do about it".
I've started to dread the evenings and night time because I've not found anything that works yet. The only thing I can do is leave her to scream it out for a while then keep going back until she eventually agrees to go to sleep. It is difficult to describe the loudness of her tantrums too. She kicks the gate and stamps her feet, screaming loudly.
I have an 8 year old too and it's making him have late nights and wake up in the night too. I feel bad for him. We had none of this when he was 4. He was so grown up so it's such a shock to the system. Didn't have a gate on his room at 3. I don't think I'll ever take the gate off my daughter's room!
When she's screaming, she starts to launch all her toys out of her room, big and small. I've bagged them and told her she's not having them back until she starts behaving herself.
The obsessiveness with her blanket is getting a bit much too. I still have her baby camera up and when I watch her, she sits up and checks the bottom of her perfectly straight blanket every 20 seconds on repeat.
We've tried the threat of taking things away and the promise of rewards but once she is in that zone, there is no reasoning with her.
She has always been a difficult child demanding attention constantly and asking the same question on repeat all day but instead of getting easier, it's getting more extreme.
I know this is a bit long but in a way it is condensed as I can't put into words how bad she is. Has anyone gone through similar? Please tell me it ends!