Normal. 3 is when I learned I would be called “no, mother” for several years. Cried and felt like Mommy Dearest minus the endearing “mommy.” 
I loved babysitting. 
I kind of fell out of it though - can’t really remember why. I haven’t worked with kids since I was 18, and I’m 25 now! Working with adults is much less fun…
Alas, it’s normal. My son’s 3.5, and at least a stubborn as both of his parents (which makes my mother positively CACKLE). The hair-trigger tantrum gets me, too - if I’d KNOWN that you were going to FREAK THE EFF OUT when I asked you to do this tiny inconsequential thing, I wouldn’t have asked, but now I feel like I have to hold the line and Be Consistent.
Total pain. And yet, when he’s nice, he’s extra delightful! He’s like the little girl with the curl.
Ames & Ilg agree, btw - their advice to parents of 3-year-olds is – seriously! – to get a babysitter if at all possible.
So, no, you are not alone, and (I ASSUME [for the love of all that is holy]) it will pass.
I have a four year old daughter, While she does not throw tantrums she labors under the delusion her parents do not exist (unless she wants something) any request is first ignored, if we make her do something (put away toys, brush teeth) this is done with a truckload of sighs and eyerolls.
That being said the small moments make it worth it. I took akiraette to dinner a few days ago and she started talking non stop about her day, About 40 minutes into her monolog she stopped and with a very serious face said “Daddy do i tell you too much?” i fell out of my chair laughing and the tables directly around us began laughing also. IMMD LOL :D:D
Yeah. We just had a hair-trigger tantrum about me putting the shampoo on his head- he didn’t want it on his head, he wanted it in the bathwater. Sigh.
I think maybe he’s freaking out when he has too many choices. We’re going to avoid toy stores for a while. I miss the days when he’d go, look at everything, be amazed, and go home content without buying anything.
My son’s grandmother is the smartest grandmother in the world. She had my son addicted to going to “The Toy Museum”. Y’know, the one with a giraffe for a mascot and a backwards R in the name? Just like at any museum, he could walk and look and sometimes even touch the very special displays.
And then they left and went for ice cream.
Brilliant.
Damn. Wish I’d thought of that.
We did have Gnat convinced that the ice cream truck was the Music Van. It drove around and played music for everyone! It’s so nice and not connected to ice cream in any way!
2 year olds are delightful - inquisitive, funny, certain they are very grown up and small enough to be sat on when necessary.
3 year olds are spawn of the devil and shouldn’t be allowed out during the day. Like in this thread, I can’t tell you how many other parents I’ve heard say “It’s not the terrible twos, it is the terrible threes!”
My son had a hair-trigger setting on his tantrums at 3 and the tool that worked best for us was a lot like WhyNot suggested upstream, but with affect matching thrown in. We read Happiest Toddler on the Block, took it to heart and dialed down the stress and tension in our family very quickly. You kinda feel like an idiot at first following it because of the way the author suggests to engage with a freaking-out kid, but damned if it didn’t work like a charm on my boy. If you are the parenting-book reading type I cannot recommend it enough.
P.S. Another tool to try is to engage the other side of his brain by asking very concrete questions with only one correct answer. “I wanted the other toy sob sob”, can be responded to with “the toy you looked at? Was it blue or red?” or “was it bigger than your hand or smaller?” or “did you put it on the shelf or on the floor?” and “did it have 3 legs or four?”. This both shows the kid you are taking him/her seriously and engages logical-brain which counteracts tantrum-brain.
This still works with my big kids if they are too overtaken by their emotions.
That’s absolutely normal. My 3 year old thinks everything is funny, or epically sad. So he’s either howling at a high volume or screaming as if he’s in horrible pain. I’m glad this thread is here, because I yelled at the poor kid half the day… sometimes it’s good to remember that they’re all pretty much this way.
Honestly, he’s great outside the house. It’s inside that he gets into trouble, touching and grabbing stuff.
My daughter was pretty good at that age, but my son? ARGH. This is unconventional advice, but I had excellent luck clear up to about age 10 distracting him with “gross boy humor”.
Blaming the dog for farting, that sort of thing. He’d try to hang onto his “grump” but within a few icky boy humor jokes, he’d lose it.
So far, my 3YO isn’t too bad. He’s just into the “whywhywhy” litany. His older brother, OTOH, is gonna get traded on the black market for a bigger house in a few days.
My son turned 4 last month, and something was birthed from his soul that has given him a temper from HELL. Hitting himself, going limp, saying “NO” to everything, protesting bath time and bedtime, etc. Then in the next breath he tells me he loves me.
I work with him the best I can on these issues (getting him to bed on time, taking privelages/toys away for bad behavior, giving him plenty of love, yet being stern when needed)… he still does it. My MIL lives down thes street, so the worst part of all this is hearing her wrath for his behavior directed at me and yelling at him constantly.
I thought 4 would be easier than 3?? Guess not. I pray this is just a stage. Glad I found this thread and that I’m not all alone with this problem!
Ye Gads. I’m glad I have a dog instead.
Jesus, you have a dog? I don’t know how you dog owners do it. I’d lose my frakkin’ mind. Thank Og I have a 3-year-old instead.
Yeah. This thread is pretty good as contraception. 
Haven’t killed him today. Didn’t kill him last night.
The Firebug’s 3 and a half. Yep, the behavior described in the OP is normal at this age. Tantrums, lying prone on the floor, kicking and screaming, over something almost impossibly trivial? Check. It can be something as minor as your turning on the light switch for him when he wanted to do it.
This can happen several times a day, but at least in the Firebug’s case, they’re usually pretty brief - a minute, maybe two, and then he’s out of it and on to the next thing. So the tantrums really don’t bother me that much - or maybe the better way to put it is, however I feel about them while they’re happening, they’re water under the bridge for me once they’re gone.
On the whole, three has been much easier than the last half of his being a 2 year old. I can’t even tell you what or why anymore, but it just seemed that in the winter and spring of last year, the kid had figured out how to push every last button of mine, and get under my skin and scrape every last nerve. Since last summer, I won’t say it’s never happened, but it’s rare enough now that I really have to wonder what happened last year, and how much of it was my still being relatively new to being a parent.
Aaaaannnd another. Our son just turned 3 last month. He was an absolutely delightful, wonderful baby, and 1-year-old, and for most of the year, 2-year-old. He still does well, by and large, but…
Whoa. What happened? Surely that was not the same child who the other night sat at the dinner table wailing “I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..I want pasta!..” for nearly an hour as the rest of the family ate its chicken dinner and eventually left the table. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as close to insane as I was at the end of that meal. Thing is, I’d have been happy to have pasta had I know it would go this way, but after Mom and I pointed out that no, Daddy cooked chicken and this is what we’re having and he kept trying anyway, we knew we were committed and couldn’t back down.
So it has gone with various other crises. And then of course there’s now the nightly bedtime issue.
Right now he’s in his room having a screaming tantrum because the wrong person opened the gate for him. The baby gate on the stairs. He wanted Mom to do it. Dad did it. He refused to come down and screamed until he was given the option of going to his room voluntarily or going to his room after being spanked.
He chose the latter. He’s in his room right now screaming his little pointy head off because he didn’t like the choice he made.
It was the culmination of being taken home for eating snow after being told not to, screaming at me for doing it, screaming at his Dad for coming home, and now this.
Sigh.
I don’t like my 3 year old much right now. Maybe we can set up a child exchange program? He seems to do really well for others. Honest!
Oh so not looking forward to this!
20 month old irishbaby got a 5 second time out for drawing on the wall last week.
Anyone would have thought we were killing her.
Currently, watching “Peppa Pig” is able to distract her from any tantrum- it approaches hypnosis.
Responding to “no” with “why not?” is also effective at this point.
She’ll look at me and say “No mummy. Gorgeous, pretty, no. Cuddles please”- I don’t know what it means either, but clearly it explains everything.