Calling all Mum's of demanding kids - are your fuses as short as mine? :( sorry, bit long)

[balanomorey]

Am wondering if I'm normal or in need of anger management!!
My coming up to 3 yo dd is so demanding, I seem to spend 3 parts of my day bawling her out or saying no - it's so demorilising - I'm sure for her too, although I know I have to set boundaraies, don't I?

Her speech and awareness of what's going on around her is, imo sometimes gobsmacking for her age. She knows exactly what she wants, can ask (demand) for it very articulately and comes out with expressions that very often floor me! She seems to know too much at a young age. But as she is so young, she is obviously so very immature in many other ways and always wants to run before she can walk ("I do it" is her favourite expression) and when i say no, because imo what she is asking for she can't do or it is dangerous to have etc, she goes off on one. She also takes forever to do what I ask - all in all, she can be SOOOO frustrating - but at the same time, adorable and I lurve her to bits!

However, as I said all this continual conflict of interest is wearing me down as I am constantly saying no and shouting to the point where she will say 'don't shout at me' before bursting into tears or she will panic if she knows or thinks she's done something wrong as she will say "sorry, sorry, sorry" over and over and looks genuinely scared I'm going to tear her off a strip .

Feel really bad this morning as we were late getting to nursery and she suddenly decided just as we were going out the door that she needed the potty. I was not best pleased as she has used the potty as an excuse lately to keep getting out of bed or stall bedtime...she sits there for ages insisting she needs to go and nothing happens, so assumed she was playing this game again. This happened last night at 3 in the morning (the sides have just come off her cot, and I think she thinks this is a great excuse for disturbing the household in the middle of the night now that she can get out and tell us she needs a wee)...so this morning I bawled her out for needing the potty (frazzled on the back of a bad night, maybe) and felt awful as she then proceeded to do a big wee...told me to say sorry for shouting at her...and told me how much she loves me ..so have been feeling guilty and crap mum all morning.

Just a bit of a rant really, but make me feel better by telling me I'm not unusual to shout - I hate shouting and am fed up of spending a large part of my day bawling and getting wound up. Am I alone in this?
Thanks for reading, sorry so long, just needed to vent. x.

Slowly, my DD is like this too and I know what you mean. If I feel in perfect health and not tired and have no other worries I can cope with her but if I don't feel completely 100% I find it painful.

Today I feel really moody and angry and aggressive and feel I am taking it out on my DH and DCs even though they are behaving the same way they always do. I kind of know why I'm like this (something this week triggered past rage) but it seems really stupid.

I think I need some time on my own to unscramble my thoughts. I become scrambled so easily though that I need lots of time on my own, more time than I can have with children. I feel like I cope less well than other people.

balano - so great to hear that all is going so beautifully at the moment - f a b news. well done all of you

DD doing fine thanks. just strutted her stuff at the school disco earlier this evening quite the thing, bandages and all, and the areas are healing well as far as i can see. plus i am so busy stressing over DS that for once i have nothing much to report over DD who is on pretty chirpy form right now!!

DS - now that's another story!! Bad Attitude is a concept we have introduced and are talking to him about a lot at the mo! and boy is he displaying it in spades right now sigh...

AN and Slowly - the first four years of my DD's life were like that too and i feel for you both. it was like dealing with a wall of negativity from sunrise to sundown every single day for what felt like centuries. and when i felt shitty for whatever reason it was a zillion times worse. time alone is crucial but so hard to find at that stage. sometimes i used to cry myself to sleep bcs i dreaded what the next day would bring (DH still shudders at the memory). what can i say...as balano says and you are not alone.
speak soon xxx

DD came out of school after wearing her animal mask which I helped her make in the week and said "My mask blew off in the playground so you shouldn't have made a mask, you should have done something else" then she said "Some other children had a mask AND animal clothes on and you should have got animal clothes for me". It doesn't look as bad when I write it down but it really irritated me as soon as I saw her!

I said she was being ungrateful and I won't want to help her make anything next time if she is going to say horrible things about what I've done, and we had an argument all the way home. Was what I said ok or bad?

I was disappointed that she picked an argument as soon as I saw her and also tried to argue with DS when he said something nice to her. Are these things as bad as I think? I feel really angry with her and like I don't want to do anything with her for the rest of the day. I hate this ungrateful and 'spoilt brat' behaviour, it seems to be one of the things that winds me up the most.

I suppose I should be positive and think about how it was a learning opportunity for us to talk about being grateful so it was important that it happened.

AN - absolutely standard opening line in such circs from my DD, i totally sympathise. i lose count of the number of situations of that sort i've found myself - this is where my deep dread of doing things like crafts with her comes from! - be it making a costume for some school thing (always, but always wrong), getting her school lunch 'right' or whatever. i tend to try to be all reasonable and brisk and to try to distract her as much as possible from the central 'catastrophe' without getting into an argument with her if i can avoid it - much easier now at 7 than in years gone by.but i too get very hot under the collar internally about what i perceive as ingratitude. GRR! one thing i find with my DD - who is getting much more pleasurable company as she gets older i must say! - is that there is a certain lack of natural empathy - it just doesn't come easily to her - and that's a hard quality to drum into someone who doesn't quite 'get' it!! hence the endless hours i spend trying to get her to imagine other people's feelings and situations etc - including MINE(!) - am hoping eventually all of this talking talking talking will pay off!

I have just had a lovely week with dd! It wasn't perfect but on the back of the two weeks we'd had previously, it was like heaven! She has eaten her food at every meal and willingly (mealtimes are usually the worst of our battlegrounds) and has mostly helped me when I've needed it. The horrible incessant 'no!' that I've been dealing with is disappearing too.

I'm not gloating, I just want to have this in print so that in 2 weeks when she is driving me bonkers again, I can remember that it passes.

Interestingly, she seems to be dropping her nap (she's 2.5) and her behaviour seems to be bizarrely better when she doesn't sleep. Can children get too much sleep?

NDGoddess, I wonder if she wasn't sleeping so deeply at night when she was having naps and now she is having better quality sleep at night? Or maybe you are just doing really good parenting!

Katie, thank you for making me feel my DD's behaviour is normal. Do any children that age really feel much empathy yet? I think the things we say and keep saying do sink in even if they look like they aren't listening. Sometimes my children surprise me by repeating something I've said, but to each other, when I thought they hadn't taken it in!

I just wanted to add one more post to this thread which I've only just come across in last few days. Have had lots of situations with dd aged 3-6 that other posters described. I am constantly amazed to rediscover what a sweet little girl she is - so good at playing with other children and her twin brother, so affectionate in her essential nature. I see her playing with her doll and talking to it and I realise what she wants from her relationship with me. Just unconditional love and reassurance. She's so good at school, and gets invited to loads of parties (unlike her twin brother who is not nearly such a winner). Yet she's clearly constantly trying to get back from me all the attention she missed, all the attention her brothers got. I try to remember she just wants to know I value her. She destroys so many situations by her bad moods and tantrums and getting to school is her particular speciality. But all the time, I try to recapture that close relationship we had when she was a baby. I try not negotiate because that makes things worse, but ignore bad behaviour, distract and listen to good behaviour. Sometimes if she won't put on her coat getting ready to go out on a freezing day, I just ignore it, and carry the coat for later, although I feel like strangling her. She's six, so small still, and yet the terrible thing is that at three I found her behaviour unacceptable. I wish I had been more understanding. I almost feel that our relationship has improved because I've returned to the essential core. She's the baby and I'm the mother, and I'm steadfast. She can't grow up until she's sure of that. P.S. I don't mean I actually treat her as a baby, just try to love her unconditionally as one would a baby.

hi swan and everyone. that was a lovely post swanriver. on a different slightly more frivolous note: DD at breakfast yesterday morning - 'mummy. i'm worried. you're not pretty enough for daddy and i think he might split up with you and find someone prettier. and that makes me worry'. aah the confidence-boost one gets from one's 7-yr-old at the start of a hectic week!!! it's those little moments that make it all worthwhile, eh?
can only assume comes from DD hanging out with new pal at school whose parents split up recently?! (but don't think it was over some gorgeous lissome 22 yr-old - but maybe i should discreetly check my facts!)
hope you are all having a slightly more egotastic week than your crushed kk123

PS AN - as we were saying about empathy in young children !!!

SwanRiver, did something happen when DD was 3? Sorry if I'm being thick. Are you saying you think it is your fault when your DD has her bad moods because of the way you have been with her in the past? I am interested because I started to have problems with my DD when she was 3 (now 5) and I do feel some of her behaviour is my fault but can't put my finger on exactly what I did wrong. She can probably sense my underlying mood even if I'm trying to act normal and I've had lots of 'unbalanced' moods.

Katie, I don't know whether to laugh or cry that your DD said that! The way I read it she doesn't think you are not pretty she is just anxious that if this could happen to her friend it could happen to her.

Swanriver- your post about your DD struck a chord with me. I am finding DS2 just turned 7 very difficult to deal with. He does the same thing with his coat. It winds me up no end at the time, but now I am sitting here, and he is upstairs quietly reading in bed, I can't understand how I can get so wound up about such a trivial matter. DS2 was 3 when DD was born and had to stop being my baby very quickly. I was very tired, irritable and impatient. He must have been very confused about the change in my behaviour. I am going to try and 'baby' him a bit more because I think that's what he needs from me ATM. He has just started calling me 'woman' in a derogatory way. I hate it and know it's wrong, and feel the need to do something about it while he's still young. DH tells him off for it too. Anyone else experienced this?

I'm so glad I found this post. I feel so ashamed because I completely lost my temper with dd1 (3.5)

She was screaming when I picked her up from the CM yesterday over something trivial, and started the screaming again this morning as soon as she woke up. It was over a lollipop can you believe? I said no (as you would at 7.15am) and that started a tantrum that went on in fits and starts for over 2 hours. I gave her other things to do and she just kept tantruming. Then she would stop, then start screaming again, "My sock huuuuuurts", was an example of a problem that set her off for 20 mins or so. I ended up completely losing it.

I threw my hair brush at the floor, slammed a door, then stormed into her room and began yelling at the mess she'd made (when in fact she'd just been sticking papers together ) and I picked up the glue stick and started yelling that she shouldn't be taking my things. She burst into new tears and asked for her daddy, to ehich I said he was at work and wouldn't care anyway (I'd just had an argument with him on the phone over dd's behaviour). What an awful thing to say. I'm so ashamed of myself.

dd is such an adorable girl, so caring and kind and full of love and praise for her sister (18 months). She's extremely advanced for her age, her childminder says she should have started school this September, and thinks this is why she gets so angry, because she is frustrated. However, I then treat her as older than her age, and become angry when we have incidents such as the lollipop one...

I'm so disappointed with myself. What makes it worse is that I spend most of my week working with other people's children and have a never-ending source of patience. I have ths same patience with dd2. She is a much 'slower' baby, and as such I expect nothing of her, and relish and delight in everything she does. So why am I so hard on dd1?

I often find myself going into her room at night just to stroke her hair and appologise, because I love her so much. But when she wakes, and starts demanding like a spoilt brat, I can't find that same level of adoration. I appologised tonight before bed for shouting at her and she just said, "when was that mummy?" She's so forgiving and loving, and I'm just a bitch.

I would defend her with my life, so why am I the one that is screaming and tantruming at her?

cupoftea, i lost it totally with DD (7) on saturday morning. she was being negative, whiny and infuriating. after the zillionth 'mummmeeeee' emanating from behind her closed bedroom door in a high-pitched shriek (she'd been sequestered there for some now-forgotten piece of naughtiness) i stormed up the stairs, flung open the door and screamed 'HOW DARE YOU'. meaning 'how dare you RUIN MY LIFE' (even though she is loads better now she is older and now life is largely pretty smooth with her and punctuated by lots of great moments). i can see her now, cringing on the bed. her next utterance: 'please don't hit me mummy'. argh. i wasn't planning to. i had no plan, actually -other than communicating my intense fury at her behaviour. these are not the edifying moments of motherhood, are they now. i have smacked her 3 or 4 times in her life, which i actually consider fairly restrained given the intense provocation i have faced - not that i am proud of lashing out i hasten to add. i'm really not. but i haven't for a long time - yet it's depressing to see that the memory is lodged there in her little mind. and it was an eye-opener to see how really and truly frightened she was. because i am mostly fairly patient and cheerful i and jolly her along all the time, when i really do lose it (rare but dramatic) it's all the more terrifying to her. sigh. she was right as rain within minutes having said that. but what i hate is reminding myself of my own mother, who was prone to lashing out erratically and very frighteningly, usually much more in tune with her own moods than for any reason directly relating to us kids. have to work on self-control!!

Aaah, thank you for this thread. I have been feeling a bit lost with my parenting recently; shouting far too much at the boys (16mo and 3.4yo). It feels like between us we are sapping all the joy out of life on a daily basis, and I feel so exhausted!

I do feel more positive for recognising that my temper is having a negative effect - especially on sensitive DS1, and have been re-reading Toddler Taming and Raising Boys to remind me of those 'obvious' things that I should/should not be doing.

Thank you to all those who have posted your coping strategies and experiences; tomorrow is another day

It must be the day for it folks...I shouted at my LO today. I was exhausted after 7 hours straight being with/interacting him (no nursery today), has just come home with him from a long session playing in the park etc. and wanted 5 minutes to myself. DS was having none of it and I tried explaining calmly for some time and then ignoring whines/demands/pulls, attempts to climb on lap and seize whatever was in my hands and then - snap - I started raising my voice which escalated into shouting loudly. This had DS terribly, inconsolably crying (God don't you feel like shit when you reduce your child to such intense blubbing?!) and I just couldn't respond. Fortunately my Dp then emerged to see what all the fuss was about and and calmed/soothed DS then took him off my hands for half an hour. The rest of the evening went fine as I had just about had enough time to recover some patience and perspective. I seem to be getting to the point where I cannot cope well when I don't get breaks in the day from child-caring. Like everyone else here I adore my child - and it feels so awful to get to the point where you just want to scream and run away from them!

KK123 your post about your DD did make me . I'll bet you're lovely looking but your girl just heard a story and is just wanting reassurance that the story wont happen to her. I suppose I have all these sorts of ego-massaging conversations ahead of me when DS is older.

Nothing useful to add, I just want this to stay in my TIO.

I'm fairly new to the MN boards and have just come across this thread.
Just wanted to say that i'm identifying completely Balanomorey with how you're feeling.
I'm increasingly not liking the person i'm becoming around my children (just turned 2 and 3) and i know i need to change tack and find some perspective for both their sake and my sanity.
I haven't time right now to read the whole thread or give it my full attention but i can see there is a lot of invaluable advice in here and a lot i can learn from.
So when all is quiet tonight (hopefully lol) this is where i'll be heading and i'm saying thank you in advance for what seems to be a very open and frank discussion of something i thought i was alone in experiencing.

I just want to congratulate myself (sorry) that I did some good 'interaction' with the children this pm. I made a dumb flower for DS and helped DD make one similar then played Snakes and Ladders with them. I know that I should spend time doing these type of things every day and today has reminded me that I DON'T do this, I hardly EVER do this! I seem to AVOID interracting with them! This is really shit! They are calmer and happier after I've done it and I feel they learn lots from it. They really miss out when I don't do it.

To make myself do housework (because I have a motivation problem), I write down each thing I've done on a list and cross it out so that I can see the list getting longer and feel satisfaction at what I have achieved. It really helps, and also DH looks at it when he comes home and it pleases him and makes me feel that he appreciates what I do. Today I've written what I've done with the children on there as well and put stars next to it. Maybe it will make me do more of this as well as housework! I think it is very true that "what gets measured gets done".

I think the same as with the housework, I don't do things with the children because I have a horrible feeling that it will be unbearable hard work (this is a symptom of depression which I'm always saying I no longer have, but maybe I do a bit). When I actually do it, it is not unbearable hard work and I actually enjoy it. Perhaps I just need to get out of the negative way of thinking.

CupOfTea, a lot of what you wrote seemed familiar to me, especially about feeling so sorry when she is asleep but then angry all over again when she starts being demanding and spoilt.

At least we are all trying to improve and not giving up! This thread is motivating.

So ActingNormal, what is your reward going to be when your star chart is full?

ha ha , I don't know, maybe a new lip gloss (just lost old one today).

AN- I can really relate to what you say about not wanting to play with the DC as you think it will be hard work. Even a simple game of snakes and ladders seems impossible with my DC. However I am doing some voluntary work in a local school, and really enjoyed playing snakes and ladders with one of the children there. It made me wonder why I can't play it with my DC. When I try they challenge all the rules, argue with each other about who is going to have the blue counter, who will throw the dice first, try and cheat and just generally make it hard work. Why?

Any ideas about why it is going wrong, and how to change it?
I would love to enjoy playing with them, it just doesn't seem to happen, which is very sad.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if someone has already suggested this, but you could play the disassociation game.

This involves imagining that there is a reality TV camera in your kitchen. There are 6 million viewers watching you live. Imagine yourself as a viewer seeing how a frazzled mum is coping.

It really did help me ...

HTH

If there were cameras in my home.... I think even Supernanny would take one look at the mo and walk straight out of there! Have a demanding 3 year old and a whining 1 year old for which (don't get me wrong I am thankful for) However I am also losing the plot thanks 2 them!!!!! Having read some of the threads... I am the same! I rarely play with them due to the pressures of tidying, cleaning and washing...which I fail to keep on top of.... So I go to bed having failed as a mother and unable to keep my house in any form of cleanliness!!!! Basically a complete failure!

You speak so much sense Rachelp73....It is so hard not to get sooo mad! Thankfully I am at work tomorrow but next day home I am gonna try soooo hard to NOT shout!