help needed -three year old driving me to despair.

[hellymelly]

I am having constant battles with my eldest daughter (3 and 4 months) I thought it was the twos that were meant to be terrible but that was fine-since turning three she has been progressivly more um.."challenging".Tonight I sat down and cried after bedtime and yet another battle.I am clearly not handling her very well,but I can't seem to work out how to make things calmer.She pushes the boundries on everything and its exhausting so then I eventually shout.For a while this was the point where she would do as asked but now she shouts back..Tonight she actually threatened to pull my hair out if she couldn't do what she wanted.It is terrible.I know we tell her off too much but i don't know how to get around that.It doesn't help either of us that her baby sister is at the really sweet stage and never gets told off,obviously.She tries to re-negotiate everything and while this is fine some of the time,I would like her to occasionally just do as she's told-is this unreasonable?I am not super strict or anything,just things like staying at the table while eating,not running away in shops etc.She is an amazing child, very sparky and bright,and we have been very close always but I am finding her really difficult and I feel like I am failing her.I am not very patient as I am totally knackered-any advice welcome.

1 2 3 magic

I wanbt you to do X

I will count to three, and if you don't do it you will go in your room for three minutes

1

2

3

Bedroom. 3 minutes.

Persist.

I have never tried anything like that-(sending to room,time out,naughty step thing etc)partly because the naughtiest child i know has to sit on the naughty step (!!)and partly because until recently she responded to requests and explainations pretty well.does it not give the bedroom a punishment association?

Just an extra thought..how on earth do you force a child to stay in a bedroom for three minutes ?

YOu hold the door shut

Or you could carry on letting her do as she pleases until you explode and scream at her, which is what she will do if she's not responding to reason and you're not prepared to use anything else.

I would definitely send her to her room for saying she was going to pull your hair out. Doesn't have to be her room though, could be her pushchair in the hallway or any other room in the house, the point is that she knows you're serious and that she can't behave like that.

thanks chunkychips.i think the baby sister is a factor,as although she has been very accepting of her and clearly loves her very much,she has been more jealous of her recently and does things like snatching her toys or pushing her off my lap,which make me really cross as she (eldest)gets far more attention overall than the baby.I will tey and think of the camera.certainly would not have wanted to be filmed hauling her back yet again to bed and shouting crossly at her to go to sleep tonight.

you keep putting them back in there till they get the idea that you wont give in, but god, its hard work. Hve 3 ds and its the youngest that is most challenging. Others would always do as told when they saw I meant business, but ds#3 sees it as a challenge. Can usually get him to do stuff if he thinks I dont want him to, ie "dont put that in the bin", or "you cant manage to finish your reading book"

He is 5 now and we have good days and bad days. He is the most difficult to deal with by far, and the terrible thing is, I recognise so many of his traits from when I was little!! My poor mother!

yes I do explode and yell after trying to be the voice of reason.She was actually in bed when she threatened to pull my hair out(!)I told her it was a horrible thing to say and asked her how she would feel if I said that to her and she said she would feel very upset.then she said sorry,but a few minutes later we were back at loggerheads.Breakfast is a flashpoint as she is always tantrummy until she has eaten but is often too tantrummy to eat(aaarrhhg).Bedtimes are getting worse.I think I would be able to be more inventive if I was less tired but the baby wakes a lot so I am at a low ebb anyway and I feel like a rotten mother.

we have a sticker chart on the go for "smiling and being nice in the morning" if thats any help!! He is an absolute bugger in the morning, and would happily lie in till 10.30 every day if he could.

only girl your message was heartening,maybe reverse psychology is the thing.She certainly sees every little thing as an exciting challenge and is an astonishingly articulate and pedantic child who can out argue me on almost any issue which as I can argue for Wales is saying something.I think I was too afraid of my mother to be very naughty!She is smiley and delightful in the morning but only until the blood sugar plummets and then the terrible wailing starts..

YOu're not a rotten mother, you're a tired mother and nobody is perfect and three is hard.

But stop reasoning with her when she has gone past the point of reason. Don't punish her but do discipline her - it doesn't make you a bad mother, it makes you a good one. Brook no argument when it is bed time. It's bed time, night night. Bed time, night night. Bed time night night.

You don't have to be mean, you just have to be consistent and repetitive. She will be screamy and pissed off and threaten violence sometimes, she will be disobedient and ignore you, she will be jealous of her sister getting ANY attention because until her sister was born she had ALL the attention. It's her age, it's not her personality, it's not her being very naughty, and it's not your parenting, it's her age and her stage, that's all.

Thanks stopspying.I have got into a rut really where I find it hard to be firm without getting annoyed,and then I feel mean (once threatened to confiscate Barbie and felt just like a playground bully).I can't seem to find the middle ground. She is sensitive to me being irritated by her and gets worse .The best times are if we have some one on one time which I try to give her but then I feel as though the baby is getting short shrift.All my friends have older children and she is not at school or anything so I don't see many other three year olds to judge what is normal and how other mothers handle things in a positive way.

Mine argues about EVERYTHING sometimes I wonder where he gets the energy from. He refuses to read his book if it has a girl on the front as he doesnt like girls, he has to choose his own clothes out of the drawer, as if I choose them he will say he doesnt like the colour, even if he wore it yesterday, he is insisting on having a fancy dress star wars party for his birthday, but if anyone else turns up as Luke Skywalker god help us!

This all sounds so bratty and spoilt, and before I had him I would have thought, "just show him who is the parent in this relationship" but he is such a strong and willfull personality every day seems like a struggle.

He is a love though and very funny and loving when he feels like it, its not all bad. I have had to change the way I deal with him compared to my other boys, he makes me think of other ways to gain his cooperation. I sometimes tell him, this thing has to be done, and you can either do it nicely and have a happy mummy, or argue, and have angry mum, either way its happening, but how I am depends on him. This is working at the moment!! Not sure for how long though!

I'm going through something fairly similar right now with my nearly 3 year old (who also has a cute little sister- common theme here!)

I think tiredness and hunger has alot to do with some of the behaviour but I suppose the rest is age related. Like you I feel I don't handle it well, swinging between being to harsh and too soft, but mostly just acting like a 3 year old myself it feels(I too am tired from cosleeping constant feeding dd2).

Can't offer any advice but lots of sympathy and understanding...

I don't have much in the way of advice but you could have been describing my dd1 who is also 3yr 4 months and also has a very endearing sibling who gets masses of attention and is a very placid soul. Like you, many nights i go to bed feeling (even more) guilty and worried that I have handled things badly and hate myself for having spent a large portion of the day shouting at her (which I swore i'd never do). I take comfort that she is only like this with us and her grandparents and for everyone she is, reportedly, 'an angel'.. The naughty step doesn't work for us it just turns it into a game but the threat of 'timeout' sometimes get through (they use timeout at nursery). Similiarly sticker charts had little impact although I have started substituting smiley faces and sad faces to recognise good/bad behaviour which seems to get through some of the tinme.

Despite dd1 biting me on the leg today in a Clarks because she was loosing the plot, we have actually had a nice day overall. By chance, her sister went to bed early and unusually we had the last hour together just hanging out washing etc and for the first time in a while we bonded again. I have been thinking about more 'special mummy/dd1' time recently and I'm sure that's something that's key to making positive change. The challenge is though how to fit that in with work, family-time, house etc..

Good luck. I'm hoping it's all a phase !

Thanks everyone who has posted.I had a better day with her today as some of the advice stuck in my head ,helping me to be firm but calm and kind,(and it just helped to hear that other three year olds are sometimes hellish too).She is a very strong willed child but it has also been a stressful 12 months for her as she has had a new sibling and a house move to a totally different place.I thought she had dealt with it all pretty well but she still misses our old home after five months and I think some of the anger at the move is coming out.I wake up a lot still to bf the baby and tiredness is the biggest factor in my response to her.She is also very sensitive to hunger/tiredness etc and a late night or a small breakfast can have a huge impact on her behaviour.I feel much less "alone " in this reading the posts,and my DH felt the same so thankyou.

Firm, calm, kind - is a good mantra.

so glad i found this we are having a nightmare too with dd 3years 5 months. She has truned from a loving well behaved child most of the time to an argumentative , controlling child. She wants to dictate everything and i constantly feel like i am battling with her.
We had dd 2 in Jan and her brother is 6 so she has two siblings who are on a pretty even keel despite lack of sleep.
At least this reassures me it could be a stage thing rather than something we are doing wrong!

Yes lilyloo that sounds like my dd too.I do hate the battles and they used to be easier to sidestep but now we seem to go head to head more.I can't work out if it is partly because I feel the need to set limits and so don't do the thing of simply sidetracking her that worked when she was two,or whether she has really got so much more determined to battle me on everything.I'm just glad I'm not the only one struggling with this!

Hi Hellymelly

Same with me and DS, 3years4months. It's like he's just discovered he's not my master, and is working hard to assert his authority. I'm emotionally, psychologically and physically drained at the moment, because every single little thing gets a NO and a giant hissy fit. Bathtime...NO. Wash your hair...NO. Brush your teeth...NO. Eat your breakfast...NO, drink your juice...NO. It gets harder and harder to be patient each day. I have to keep telling myself it's just a phase. 123 does work, but he will then do whatever he's told to do in tears, as if the worst thing in the universe has just happened to him. I think we just have to keep going and try to keep firm, kind, calm as Janni said.

Good luck!