My daughter’s three in a couple of weeks. The Terrible Twos have been OK - just the normal assertion of an individual personality, which is fine, and not too much of the howling paddies on the floor in Sainsburys.
Keeping fingers crossed for the next 12 months - she’s lovely most of the time, but I always have the feeling that lurking behind a normally cherubic exteriorthere’s a cross between Machiavelli and a tazmanian devil waiting to pounce.
My son is going through the terrible 20-months, currently 21 months and crying like his world has ended if you even think the word “No” - our current tactic (when at home) is to send him to the bathroom to have his tantrum & most of the time he will trudge off, weeping copiously, shut the door and collapse on the floor, then get distracted by the shower curtain and emerge within a few minutes grinning from ear to ear…
Grim
Psycho is a perfectly normal state for a 3yo - at least in my family. It’s not the whole time or anything close to that, but when a kid that age gets rolling it’s a damn avalanche. They combine the ridiculously-high voice of a toddler, the inability to control their volume, tons of energy… when they’re mad they’re unable to reason, yet they’re already old enough to refuse to accept unreasons from anybody else. Sorry we sent you a cousin, LiLi!
JoseB, parenting is like marriage: what you get once you’re in it is not what you thought you were purchasing. I know very, very few people who actually knew what kids are like when they got into parenting. That includes people who were, for example, kindergarten teachers: they knew what 5yos are like, but nothing about baby colic.
Oh, I had no idea what kids were like but I was aware of my ignorance. It’s been interesting.
We do actually offer choices most of the time, even, “Well you can go sit on the stairs or I can spank you for pushing your little brother over. Which do you prefer? " :rapid exit to stairs:
We’ve got to the why stage already. It’s about 5000 times a day, and mostly unanswerable (“Why is the wall?”” Why am I a boy?").
Oh, we also try to sympathise and talk through feelings. We’re not having marked success but we’ll keep at it. We had an amazing meltdown in the middle of the night because he decided he wanted a bath. Must Not Kill Him.
It’s good to know that other kids are also horrible at this age. He’s normally nice, bright, funny, loving, and we miss our kid. That kid, not the replacement we’ve been given. 
I’ve often said “It’s a darn good thing they’re cute or they’d never live to puberty.”
Sounds like you’re doing pretty much the right thing in the right way most of the time, and that’s about all any of us can do with kids.
Just another voice to the chorus: sounds about right. My daughter’s very close to your son’s age–she turned three in November.
This weekend we asked her to pick up the stuffed animals in her bedroom. She refused. We told her she couldn’t come out of her room until she complied. There were about ten stuffed animals, all she had to do was throw them into the basket in the corner. Would have taken her approximately 30 seconds to complete.
That girl stayed in her room for two hours, crying and screaming, rather than obey us. It wasn’t until she was threatened with having to stay home when the rest of us went out her Daddy’s birthday dinner that she finally gave in. (So glad she didn’t call our bluff on that one!)
And yes, some days I feel like if I hear the word “why” one more time, I’m seriously going to lose it.
Because the dammed little boogers have a wonderful survival instinct. Just moments before you start looking at the kitchen knives with longing, they throw those pudgy little arms around your neck and start crooning that you’re the BEST Mommy EVER and your heart just melts. It’s uncanny.
Oh, I know you weren’t looking for advice, but I do have a tip here. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, they don’t really want to know why, they just want to have a conversation but they aren’t sure how to initiate one yet. But they know that “why” gets you talking. They’re still learning. So don’t worry too much about giving them the right answer (especially to nonsensical questions), take it as a cue to practice conversational skills.
“Why is the wall?”
“To hold up the ceiling. Would you like to hold up the ceiling?”
giggle. “No! I can’t reach it!”
“What could hold up the ceiling? An alligator?”
“No!”
“A pick up truck?”
“No!”
“A wall?”
“YES!!!” giggle giggle giggle giggle
“Why am I a boy?”
“Because you were born that way. What can boys do?”
“Build a castle!”
“Can Mommy girls build a castle, too?”
“Yes!”
“Yay! Let’s build a castle!”
(or “No,” to which I reply, “Really? I bet I could build a castle. Let’s build a castle and find out!”)
And yes, three year olds are psychos. Four is usually pretty good (although we separated when my daughter was four, so that was rough.) Five year olds are assholes. I’m loving six. It’s the odd number years that kill me.
Yeah, Whatsit the Youngest stopped right in the middle of a truly ear-busting tantrum the other day, wandered over to me, and said, “I wub ya, Mommy.”
Well, OK. I guess I can increase the bread and water rations slightly. But just slightly, mind you.
Totally typical. I don’t have kids but have been around (and babysat) plenty of three-year-olds and kids of all ages. At 3 some of them are agreeable and easy as pie, more are huge PITA. I think a lot of three-year-olds are very frustrated people - they’ve begun developing communication skills, can understand some consequences of actions, but have so little emotional control.
And some kids are just much more whiny and tantrummy than others. Doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong as parents (unless you are in fact letting them train you to give in when they start whining/screaming/flailing). My mom is strict as hell and whining could never get you half an inch with her, but my youngest sister whined and tantrummed a ton for many years. All it got her was extra punishment, it was just a part of her personality at certain ages to react that way.
My two-and-three-quarters-year-old is at this stage. It’s kind of crazymaking so I’ll try your approach and see how that goes.
In general she’s a happy active child, although she’s also more than a little fearless and insane. On the same day last week she ran headlong into a concrete wall , stuck her head in a plastic bag, and threw herself backwards down a flight of stairs, and came up laughing every time. She’s like that little kid in Parenthood. If she lives to four she’ll probably turn out just fine; if I live until she’s four, I’ll be a nervous wreck.
(Also, she’s still resisting the potty training. More crazymakingness.)
I read somewhere (I think it was AskMoxie) that in terms of physical skill they’re like stroke victims. They understand how things ought to work, but they can’t make their bodies obey and it’s very frustrating.
Usually Why doesn’t bother me. The screaming and stubbornness for no good reason is what makes me want to put him out on the front lawn with a sign saying “Free to a home”.
Gyrate, the potty training is going very badly. I’m mostly waiting with occasional attempts at bribery because we don’t need another area of control/arguing issues.
The I Love You’s are something I try to remember when he’s screaming “I don’t like you! You’re the worst Mommy ever!” because I tried to get him to put his shoes on.
I started babysitting at 11 and had a thriving business going before I retired at the tender age of 16 to embark upon my first career change: babysitter to fast food drone. I much preferred the fast food gig. I was the youngest of 7, so I was also the designated family babysitter for my 20+ nieces and nephews. Eventually, I quit the fast food gig and got a job in the Children’s section of the public library.
I think all that experience with kids is the main reason I did not ever have children of my own. I think if more people spent their formative years watching little sprogs, there would be a lot less thoughtless breeding.
But maybe not. Some people enjoy the parenting thing. So I hear.
All three year olds are psycho.
I think we need you to post in all parenting threads, just because of your username. 
Definitely feel you here.
My beautiful and angelic 3 year old has turned into a beautiful and demonic 3 year old… Of course, not all the time, but there have been days where she flat out exhausts me.
Heh. We were so talking about doing exactly this when the Little One was a week old. Good to know we’ll be thinking about it seriously again in a couple of years…
I don’t know about sleep. He’s just outgrown his afternoon nap in the last couple of weeks (sob) and he doesn’t act tired. I think it’s largely the control/decision-making problems MsWhatsit was writing about.
Argh, toddler freaking out about naptime upstairs, Gnat’s being a pain downstairs, I need alcohol.
I’m sorry to tell you this - while 3 was difficult - 3.5 was an epic nightmare. “I’m not going to do that, and you can’t make me.”
The parenting classicYour Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy? spends about the first two thirds of the book rhapsodizing about how wonderful and charming three-year-olds are. The last third, dealing with age 3 1/2, boils down to “get a lot of babysitters.”
Repeat after me: "Someday I’m going to be glad I let him live. Someday I’m going to be glad I let him live. Someday I’m going to be glad I let him live. ".
Really. It’s true.
Moon Unit and Dweezil were both pretty awful at that age. Of course they were both awful (Dweezil especially) earlier.
As you’ve noticed, sometimes it can be triggered by something being “not right”… in your case, blood sugar; in our case, it could have been air molecules bouncing off them at the wrong angle. Once, when Moon Unit was on antibiotics for an ear infection or something, she became Psychotoddler for 10 solid days. As in, we were used to a tantrum every day or two, but while on the meds, it was 3-4 times a day, easily.
No advice here, just support from one who’s been there, done that.
Yes, we spend a lot of time saying, “He’ll be interesting and fun to talk to when he’s older. We can’t kill him now.” I feel a little bad because the littler one is so extremely nice right now, and we spend so much time cooing at the toddler and shouting at the preschooler.
This To Shall Pass.
About the insulin pump- we talked about it with his doctor at our last clinic appointment, and he said it can be good, but it isn’t a panacea and the learning curve is steep. He said we’d basically be thrown back into early-diagnoses mode as we learned, and it would take months before life returned to normal. Plus it’s something that can be messed with during a tantrum. We’re waiting on it. We don’t need the extra stress right now.
