First of all I'm sure most of this is probably pretty normal for the age but I need to get it off my chest. My youngest dd will be 3 in a couple of months. I love her so much, she is funny, cheeky, sweet and loving.
She is also defiant, strong, into everything, doesn't listen, doesn't seem to respond to consequences for bad behaviour.
She's just totally different to my eldest and it feels like she's getting worse, not better with age. If I tell her off she just laughs, if I put her on the step she thinks it's a game, I can't give her food without her messing about with it. Her latest trick is taking a sip from her (non spill) cup and then spitting it back out onto her food or even into someone else's drink
I know it's gross. I've started just taking her food away from her when she starts messing with it because it's obvious she doesn't want to eat it. Sometimes she cries when I do this but then I just think well you should have eaten it when you had the chance.
We can't leave drinks within reach because she will drink them. She drank the last of the orange juice which we had given to her older sister this morning which resulted in tears from the eldest.
We've had to put locks on our bedside table drawers because in the mornings she sneaks into our room and will go through them/take stuff/eat any food that happens to be left in there.
There were two Easter eggs in our bedroom that we had put out of reach (so we thought) for ourselves. She managed to sneak into our room, climb to get to them and ate one whole egg before we woke up and found her.
It's just a constant stream of 'low level' chaos and disruption.
She knows these things are wrong because she waits till you're not looking to do them. I literally cannot take my eyes off her and I know 2 year olds can be a handful but I honestly didn't have it this bad with my eldest. I can tell when she's up to something because she looks to see if I'm watching before she does it.
I'm exhausted and my anxiety is through the roof, I feel like I can't even go into the kitchen and load the dishwasher or put a wash on without her taking the opportunity to do something she's not supposed to do. I just feel a bit trapped by her at the moment.
I know these are all relatively small things but it's just constant all day every day from the moment she gets up till she goes to bed. I'm still giving her a nap every other day even though she probably doesn't need them because I desperately need that break to try and restore some sort of order in the house.
If I tell her off she smiles or laughs; doesn't matter what I do. Whether I talk to her firmly, calmly, or shout and ball at her (which I hate doing). Nothing seems to work.
She starts nursery in September and I'm so worried about how she's going to behave there.