Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

Everything going wrong with 2.9 year old and it's making life really shit right now

6 replies

teaandkittehs · 20/09/2025 19:11

I expect this is a normal profile for many kids who are 2 years 9 months old, but things just keep getting worse. We have hit a period of serious food refusal, including the few favourites that she has consistently eaten since weaning. Eating got a lot worse between 18 months and 2 years, but we had a menu of a few decent meals she would eat until about a week ago. She's pretty much living on Cashews, cheese, fruit and some raw veg (although would eat bacon or sausages everyday if we let her - we don't, obviously). Potty training started well but hit a wall with complete refusal to use the toilets at nursery (she holds her wee) and pooing herself 80% of the time even though she clearly knows when she needs to poo (she hides and shouts go away, we have had a handful of successful missions to the potty but things seem to be moving backwards now). She slept like a dream from 6 months until 17 months with a few minor bumps when going through a nap transition, but at 17 months she hit the mother of all sleep regressions which included split nights with wakes lasting up to 5 hours and lasted 4 months - since then her sleep has had good and bad periods but recently has become completely unpredictable with bad or good night's instead of periods of a few weeks or a couple of months that are bad or good. The split nights periodically return, and nightmares have started too at times (poor little lady).

It's just all kind of gone wrong at once. It doesn't help that we only get 7 hours of free nursery through flying start and are raising her largely at home while I attempt to hold down my full time (but quite flexible) job, and my husband tries to keep his business going part time. We will hopefully qualify for 30 hours free nursery in January once she has turned 3 (Welsh government don't match the free childcare in England). Furthermore, my husband is now home schooling my autistic step son because his school consistently punished him for actions largely resulting from, and written down clearly in, his diagnosis. We don't earn enough to keep going like this either. So lots of background stress while things have got tough with our little one hitting all these issues at once.

I'm not really looking for suggestions, more just some assurance that the issues she is going through will improve or pass with time. I realise they probably will, but for some messed up reason I still need to hear it from people who have been through it!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
CabbageWater · 20/09/2025 22:12

This sounds super, super tough and I can confirm that (for us anyway) 2.5/3 yo is when we found our DD to start becoming really hard work emotionally. She had always been a bad sleeper, but she was always quite bright and loving and enjoyed being helpful and learning. Then at 3yo, almost overnight, she started really pushing back on everything, screaming and kicking. Everything became a battle, every minute of every day, it was so fucking hard! It's only around 4-4.5 yo that it started to get a little better as we could then start having more logical conversations and talk about emotions, behaviours and consequences better.

The one thing I'd say is that, I have hear that 3yo is a tough age for most kids, but also this is when I fell pregnant with my 2nd and my health took a massive, massive dive - almost overnight, I became a totally different mum to her. It took me months to realise that, that must have really taken a toll on her, and that her behaviours were linked to this, massively. (We also had regressions in potty training with lots of accidents despite being potty trained for a year prior to that). I am saying this to ask you if there have been any major changes in your family life that could amplify her behaviours? You say your stepson is home schooled now, does that coincide? House move, family stresses, etc.?

BunnyRuddington · 21/09/2025 06:29

Gosh that is such a lot to deal with. Is DH you getting Carer’s allowance and DLA for his DS? They might help out with the finances? Will UC help to pay for childcare for DD?

And I know that you don’t want suggestions but with the toilet withholding, lack of sleep, fussiness with food and a half sibling with ASD I think it’s worth doing the Ages & Stages Assessments, just to rule out something more going on:

30 month Ages & Stages

30 month Social & Emotional Ages & Stages Flowers

teaandkittehs · 21/09/2025 07:42

BunnyRuddington · 21/09/2025 06:29

Gosh that is such a lot to deal with. Is DH you getting Carer’s allowance and DLA for his DS? They might help out with the finances? Will UC help to pay for childcare for DD?

And I know that you don’t want suggestions but with the toilet withholding, lack of sleep, fussiness with food and a half sibling with ASD I think it’s worth doing the Ages & Stages Assessments, just to rule out something more going on:

30 month Ages & Stages

30 month Social & Emotional Ages & Stages Flowers

She did fine on both except the couple of questions relating to mealtimes! She ate well until about 10 days ago. I'm wondering whether it's a post-growth spurt slowdown, while she just happens to be going through potty training at the same time and is also learning a lot of new words so having developmental sleep disturbances, with gap happened before. She was a bit speech delayed shortly after age 2 but is within the normal range now albeit down the lower end.

OP posts:
teaandkittehs · 21/09/2025 07:46

CabbageWater · 20/09/2025 22:12

This sounds super, super tough and I can confirm that (for us anyway) 2.5/3 yo is when we found our DD to start becoming really hard work emotionally. She had always been a bad sleeper, but she was always quite bright and loving and enjoyed being helpful and learning. Then at 3yo, almost overnight, she started really pushing back on everything, screaming and kicking. Everything became a battle, every minute of every day, it was so fucking hard! It's only around 4-4.5 yo that it started to get a little better as we could then start having more logical conversations and talk about emotions, behaviours and consequences better.

The one thing I'd say is that, I have hear that 3yo is a tough age for most kids, but also this is when I fell pregnant with my 2nd and my health took a massive, massive dive - almost overnight, I became a totally different mum to her. It took me months to realise that, that must have really taken a toll on her, and that her behaviours were linked to this, massively. (We also had regressions in potty training with lots of accidents despite being potty trained for a year prior to that). I am saying this to ask you if there have been any major changes in your family life that could amplify her behaviours? You say your stepson is home schooled now, does that coincide? House move, family stresses, etc.?

The only things that have changed recently are home schooling and potty training. It allows scares of a bit because I'm a week, my job ramps up and I'll be gone all day 4 days a week until after her bedtime some nights. I have busy winters and my husband has busy summers which is how we manage to work while having her. The home schooling brings some added tension to the house, too, as my stepson is quite resistant and has repetitive arguments with my husband about why he should have shown his working out etc (in maths. He can't seem to accept that he will get lower grades, he just keeps repeating that he got the answer right so what's the point etc)

OP posts:
teaandkittehs · 21/09/2025 07:50

BunnyRuddington · 21/09/2025 06:29

Gosh that is such a lot to deal with. Is DH you getting Carer’s allowance and DLA for his DS? They might help out with the finances? Will UC help to pay for childcare for DD?

And I know that you don’t want suggestions but with the toilet withholding, lack of sleep, fussiness with food and a half sibling with ASD I think it’s worth doing the Ages & Stages Assessments, just to rule out something more going on:

30 month Ages & Stages

30 month Social & Emotional Ages & Stages Flowers

I don't think we qualify for UC because my earning is over the threshold but not enough to support a family of 4, and I didn't think you could get a carers allowance or DLA for a 14 year old who technically can be schooled in mainstream schools (my husbands ex really wanted the lad to go to the BEST school around and schools like that don't really seem to want want SEN students making their ofsted look bad, the school was in the paper recently for locking kids out of toilets and how badly this affected SEN students who needed space to regulate, and girls having periods etc)

OP posts:
teaandkittehs · 21/09/2025 07:52

The only other change is that we had even less childcare over the as flying start doesn't cover school holidays. We had a good summer with camping etc and a festival, it is really just in the past couple of weeks that it's all started to descend into shit. Everyone tells me all the things she is doing are considered quite normal for her age but she just happens to be having all the issues at once!

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page