rebelling child, please help!

I am a single mommy of a 2 1/2 little girl. I divorced her daddy a few months ago and have been living apart from him for 8 months. I have full custody of her but she still visits with him. The last few months have been so hard. She won't listen to anything I say and it seems like I have tried everything short of spanking her which I don't believe in doing. She destroys things, bites and says no to everything I say. Yet she will listen to eveyone else. What am I doing wrong. This is so hard to do alone. Please offer some advice on disipline, toilet training, and monsters. She is driving me crazy!!

Well you are in the middle of what we like to call the "terrible twos". This is a time where children get really frustrated because they want to do things and want to communicate, but lack the skills to do so. So they get frustrated, and have temper tantrums, and drive you nuts. They are testing you to find out their boundaries and learning the rules you have.

Your situation is even more complicated due to the divorce. Now she has two sets of rules to try and learn and two environments to adjust to. Its not uncommon for children to react badly to a divorce. Their world as they know it has been upset and they have trouble adjusting to that.

My advice: hang in there. It takes time, but it works itself out. Don't worry about the toilet training. She is too young yet to really press the issue. If she wants to do it fine, but don't force her. The behavior stuff is something you just have to be persistent with. Be consistent in what you tell her. Keep the rules the same (kids do well when the rules are consistent). As much as you can keep the rules the same between you and your ex the better. And use time outs. Kids of this age sometimes get so worked up they just need a cooling off period (and so do the parents). Let her throw her fits in her room and come out when she's calmed down. Then try things again.

Hope this helps. I'm a father of 3 so I have felt your pain.

Oh, I forgot about the monsters. Do a "monster cleaning ceremony" at bedtime. Open the drawers, go in the closet, under the bed, and anywhere else she says there are monsters and either scare the monsters out or use a broom and sweep them away.

It works!