Hi,

Sorry things are so rough right now. Parenting takes such great courage. It can all blow up in your face and you still have to come back to it again and again.

I too had a time when my kids were young and behavior was wildly out of control. It had all seemed to be going ok and then my husband and I found ourselves in a constant battle with the kids over basic behavior.

But you may have given yourself the answer in what you wrote. Several times you mention that you gave your child consequences for bad behavior but it never did any good.

This is because negative reinforcement has been shown to not work to change behavior.

I encourage you to look for a book called, "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child." He is a Yale child psychologist who has studied what actually works to get good behavior change in children. Then in the book he teaches you all tips and tricks to make it work. The bottom line of it is to shift your focus from "correcting" bad behavior to praising and rewarding the behavior you want.

When you really get this, you can flip the atmosphere in your home from combatative and negative to positive and encouraging. You can do it pretty much over night. AND you'll get the behavior change you need.

To really make this work you'll need to spend some time defining and writing out the behavior that you DO want. Then you'll need to learn the tips to effective positive reinforcement. These things are very do able but I highly recommend you read the book to avoid common pitfalls.

Once the basic behavior is better you will find yourself slowly becoming free to pay attention to building a relationship with each child. And the skill of positive reinforcement will not only get you thru the behavior crazy toddler years. It will help you thru all kinds of parenting issues.

I hope this helps! Good luck and hang in there!

From a mom with twins