My 3.5 year old has no impulse control and will not listen to anything. What should I do?
I have a 3 1/2 year-old daughter I recently have taken her to a behavioral clinic. Even though she’s too young to be diagnosed with ADHD they said that she meets all the criteria for it. I’m really struggling and don’t know what to do. She is defiant about literally everything from the moment she wakes up till she goes to bed. She is aggressive. She hits spits. She’s kicked the cat occasionally no matter what punishment I do she just doesn’t care. I have a three month old baby so punishment is hard with being consistent, if I put her in timeout, she will not stay there or she starts breaking things around her and then as soon as she gets out of timeout, she’ll just do the same thing I put her in timeout for. I’ve tried throwing toys away. She might care at first for the first few minutes and then she doesn’t care and does the thing again. I’ve tried doing positive reinforcement that one’s a little hard because she doesn’t do much that’s positive but it doesn’t seem to make an impact either way I’ve tried techniques to calm her calming corner, deep breaths, etc. as soon as she’s done calming down, she’ll just ask for the same thing again and if I say no, she’ll freak out. it usually takes me a couple hours to get her to bed at night because she refuses to. She tells me that she’s going to do what she wants to do no matter what I do I just cannot get her to listen. I’m feeling very frustrated and I don’t want this impacting our relationship because everything‘s a constant battle. She also attends daycare Monday through Friday and they have the same problems that I am having. It’s just worse at home. I’m mostly doing everything alone while struggling with a new baby. The behavior clinic hasn’t given me much to do. Has anyone had any success or been in my situation?