I'm losing the will to live...20m dd driving me INSANE...please, please help

[kitkat9]

I don't know what's happening to her. She has always been, shall we say, headstrong, which has it's problems but usually she's just a typical toddler. However, the last week has been a nightmare

She seems to have decided she hates het cot and screams blue murder every night when I try to get her to go to bed. This is after hardly any problems with her sleeping before. She's not the kind of kid you can leave to cry - I have tried this a few times and I am strong enough to cope with this (it worked with my older ds before) but she screams so hard she makes herself vomit. Then I end up having her downstairs again for at least a couple of hours until I can get her back to bed. Last night was a disaster, I'm not kidding when I say that she had no more than 5 hours sleep - she was still up at 2am.

She is having tantrums at least 4 times a day, and I have no idea what is setting her off - and my God she doesn't give up the meltdown until she's ready. I have tried every approach, form holding her (she won't let me) to totally ignoring her (makes no difference) to completely losing my marbles and shouting at her at the top of my voice. Unfortunately shocking her into submission seems to be the only thing that sometimes works. But I don't want to be a screeching mum. It makes me feel so and guilty.

She barely eats anything - I mean today she refused all breakfast (cereal, fruit, cereal bars offered) and only drinks a bit of milk. She's literally only had a few crackers all day. I am worried sick about her lack of eating, but nothing entices her. I offer various different snacks throughout the day and all are turned down.

My ds is 4.6 and he was never as hard as this. I'm not highly strung, just tired and worried. I'm also 26w pg. And at the end of my tether.

Any hints/tips/tricks any of you can offer will be so gratefully received.

BTW, I'm in the USA, no friends or family around to help me out.

Might it be time to try a bed?

For tantrums i would put her in timeout until she has calmed down.

Have you thought about a snack box

ds likes to have the control of choosing when to eat himself rather than being told when to eat by me so this could work for you? when he was younger i always had a snack plate of bits and pieces out for him to have what he wanted when he wanted.

Nappyaddict - snack boxes are great, we have one and DD loves it. I had a non-eater until she could feed herself. DD loves me getting the box down so she can choose her snack and it rules out the frustration tantrums when I keep getting it wrong, also I think so says no for the sake of it most of the time!

The other thing I did was I made chicken balls using lots of veggies, apple and chicken, mince it all up and cook in patties. If nothing else would go down then they would as she could pick them up like a biscuit and munch away.

Now she is a fully fledged self feeder she lets me stuff the food in till the cows come home if I let her read a book!

Hey ho, the things we do. I hope you have a better time of it when the toe/teeth get better.

BBF - how old was she when she started having the snack box?

Haven't read all the answers, but I'm sure they're good. This sounds really really hard for you and even though you don't have family or friends around, is there no way you can get a bit of paid childcare a few hours each day? A fresh, enthusiastic new person in her life could actually work wonders and would give you a really vital breather, especially as you have another baby coming. It could be a really simple thing like someone who comes in regualarly to take her to the park. I did this with my DS2 when he was about 15 months and the relief it gave me was totally out of proportion to the amount of money it cost!!!

could she be unwell? Or coming down with something, could she be teething?

hi again

nappyaddict - there are always snacks out for her, all day long, esp if she hasn't been eating breakfast, lunch etc. I tend to put little boxes of raisin, carrot sticks, animal crackers, melon etc out for her and hope that she'll pick at something as she wanders around...works sometimes. I always make her dinner, sometimes she has it, other times she doesn't...the other night she picked up her bowl and spoon, and dumped the entire lot in the bin.... !

It's been hit and miss all week - we've had some good days, along with the usual terrible tantrums...which I've been ignoing, then giving lots of cuddles when she calms down. I think she's too little to understand the time out concept but will def try it as she grows.

As far as childcare goes - I've got her name down to start in the same place as her brother come Feb when she turns 2 - they don't take children until age 2.

Ithink she's been teething so I've been keeping her dosed up with Calpol and Nurofen, esp towards bedtime and that sems to have helped. I've come to the conclusion that she likes to have control and I'm 'letting' her have that control to some extent - not forcing her to do something but rather gently guiding her towards doing what I want her to do - it means things take longer but she feels she has her own way and I get the result I wanted without the meltdown...does that make sense?

Kitkat - I think that is called 'choosing your battles' and nought wrong with that imo , there will be plenty to battle about in the coming years I am sure...while we can choose what they are, do it!!!

kitkat - if she's always had a snack plate perhaps it is time to introduce a snack box. she could come with you to pick a new exciting box perhaps with her favourite character on? this is what i did a few months ago when ds started to lose interest in the snack plate (probably cos he'd always had it since weaning began) and act as if it wasn't even there. something new and excting made him take a new interest in it. he did start losing interest again a couple of weeks ago so when he did go over it to get something out i would make a big deal of saying oooh what do you want. you can choose? would you like this or this or this. he seems to really enjoy having the control over choosing it which he was doing before anyway but for some reason he feels more like he is choosing if i ask him what he wants to pick rather than him just going and picking it himself without any fuss. hope that makes sense.

nappyaddict - sorry, been away from the post for a few days. DD was about 13 months when I started a snack box, now she is 17 months and is very well used to it.