3 yo DD is ruining our lives!

[SayCoolNowSayWhip]

It sounds melodramatic, I know, and a little bit harsh to poor DD. I will try to keep my general whinging to a minimum.... Those of you who have seen my previous posts will know I don't find it easy being a mum at the best of times.

But DD is being an absolute terror at the moment. We've been through the terrible twos, and were hoping that the threes would be a bit better... No such luck! Everything at the moment is an absolute battle, from getting dressed to eating breakfast to not hitting her baby brother (8 months). It's got to the point where the 2 days she spends at nursery come as an absolute relief to me, and both DH and I dread the weekends as nothing seems to make her happy, and we just live for bedtime.

I know, I know, I'm reading it back and thinking how awful it is to be saying things like this about my own child. But really, she is just behaving appallingly, and I don't know how to stop it! Clearly as parents we are failing her in some way, but I don't know how! She gets as much attention as we can give her, but anything less than 100% of my attention 100% of the time results in a complete screaming screeching melt down. And of course I can't give her that.

We have tried reward charts, sending her to her room, naughty step, ignoring the tantrums, everything you can think of. And nothing seems to work.

Help!

I had a 3 year old like that.

She completely ruled the roost, and held us all to ransom, tbh. We had a complicagted situation, as she has an older disabled sibling, whose life she was making a misery too, but who was (unwittingly) reinfircing her behaviour.

We went to extremes, and consulted experts. one thing we were told to try was to not minimise her feelings, but to ask her 'can you be happy?'

so, eg - I offer to read her a book. she screams the place down as she wants to do painting. I acknowledge it is sad when we can't always do what we want all the time, but 'can you be happy anyway?'. Surprisingly, she sometimes said yes! And validating her emotions seemed to help her too. Sometimes it turned out that she couldn't quite articulate how she was feeling, but when I said eg 'yes, it can make me cross when X happens' she thought about it, and decided she wasn't cross after all.

We also did a lot of work on using a 'nice voice'. And telling ehr it was ok to be cross/shout/scream/whatever, but that it wans't ok to shout at me. So if she wanted ot carry on being cross, then she could do so in the playroom/the hallway/her bedroom, and when she was ready to stop shouting at me, I would be ready to do XYZ. That I was happy ot listen, if she was talking to me nicely.

I didn't like sending her out, but tbh, she was so in my face, that I was losing my temper too,which just escalated the situation (and it upset her sibling, which also exacerbated everything). having her scream it out elsewhere gave us all a bit of space to calm down without losing face.

oh, and btw, to offer hope, my ex-demonic 3 year old is now a happy 7 year old who everyone tells me is a delight, and lovely and polite and helpful (wish she would be at home too ).

this too will pass.

I know people say 'terrible twos' but three is fucking hideous. I have no advice at all, I just blundered through all mine until it was time to start school. I think sometimes they do random cute stuff to stop you actually killing them.

Haha I know exactly how you feel, my son is the most whinny thing ever, about every little thing!! Doesn't help when grandparents panda to his every need, but I can't say anything to them because are great at looking after him and help us out a lot. He is an only , I think he would be better with a little brother or sister but I can't put myself through the threes again ! I thought when he grew out of the baby stage everything would be easier but no, he is more demanding than ever, constantly chattering about what he wants , what he doesn't like! He's at nursery school every day too.

TurnOff - yes absolutely! Just when you're about to completely snap or go insane, there's that one tiny glimmer of light when they do something amazing.

It's just horrible though, I feel like we can't do anything or go anywhere because she's just such a nightmare. I will persevere with the emotion validation though, that sounds good.

And wine. Wine helps...

They dont' call them 'Threenagers' for nothing!