Is this a phase? I'm going insane.

amother

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 8:47 pm

My dd is 11 months old. I seriously do not have a second to myself all day. She REFUSES to let me have even a moment to do anything I need to do.

*If I put her in her HUGE playpen, she screeches hysterically.
* Even when she's not in her playpen, she refuses to stay in her toy area. Instead she roams the house and destroys everything.
* She is completely disinterested in toys. She only wants to play with things she's not supposed to.
* She refuses to be confined in any way...at all!...She will no longer sit in her highchair, even for five minutes and she screams through her entire meal if we make her sit in it.
* In the last week, she has been on a total hunger strike. Except for bottles, she's entirely rejecting all foods.
* She does not obey at ALL. No matter how many times I say 'no', she doesn't care and does what she wants.
* She wants me on the floor playing with her (with things she's not supposed to play with ) all day long. If I get up for even a few minutes, she has a fit.

I'm losing my mind. I can't keep this up. My house is filthy. My husband has had to defrost food for dinner this past week. And none of us have any clean clothes in our drawers because I can't get a bit of laundry done at all (and yes, I know I could do it late at night, but I'm so tired I usually can't get myself out of bed or off the couch after she goes to sleep).

Any ideas on how to deal with this?

(and before anyone suggests it....I know it's a great idea to take my dd into the kitchen with me and give her spoons and pots to bang, but this only creates a huge mess and entertains her for a grand total of two minutes before she's off somewhere else destroying something.)

momaleh

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 9:35 pm

1. Put everything you don't want her to play with out of reach. Let her play with anything else, do what you have to do, and spend a few minutes ( alot of minutes?) at the end of the day putting it away. Yes, you will have to spend time cleaning it up, but you will have time to do other things while she's around instead of playing with her all day long.

2. When my dd was that age she was exactly the same. I had to put her by a babysitter/gan one day for a meeting and I was so nervous...I ran to pick her up, and she LOVED it. So I sent her every morning. She had a great time, and I got stuff done.

BeershevaBubby

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 10:03 pm

amother wrote:

Let her.

amother wrote:

* Even when she's not in her playpen, she refuses to stay in her toy area. Instead she roams the house and destroys everything.

Then obviously your house isn't baby-proof. Baby proofing doesn't just mean gates by the stairs, plugs in the unused sockets and wires out of reach. It's keeping anything you don't want destroyed out of baby's reach. We don't have our 11 month old in a playpen any more but we have the living room area enclosed so he has a big area to play in but he can't crawl around the entire house at will.

amother wrote:

* She is completely disinterested in toys. She only wants to play with things she's not supposed to.

Sounds like she's either got too many toys or is simply bored with what she has.

amother wrote:

* She refuses to be confined in any way...at all!...She will no longer sit in her highchair, even for five minutes and she screams through her entire meal if we make her sit in it.

Instead of putting the tray on the high chair, push it up to the table so she's more a part of what's going on.

amother wrote:

* In the last week, she has been on a total hunger strike. Except for bottles, she's entirely rejecting all foods.

Is she teething?

amother wrote:

* She does not obey at ALL. No matter how many times I say 'no', she doesn't care and does what she wants.

Seriously??

amother wrote:

* She wants me on the floor playing with her (with things she's not supposed to play with ) all day long. If I get up for even a few minutes, she has a fit.

So let her have a fit. My 11 month old will sometimes start screaming when I leave the living room to work in the kitchen so either I'll out him in the high chair in the kitchen with me or let him scream. Usually he'll stop eventually and play or I'll finish what I'm doing and come back.

amother wrote:

(and before anyone suggests it....I know it's a great idea to take my dd into the kitchen with me and give her spoons and pots to bang, but this only creates a huge mess and entertains her for a grand total of two minutes before she's off somewhere else destroying something.)

Put her in the high chair. Give her a pot and spoon. Or finger foods.

Plonis

Wed, Feb 24 2010, 10:18 pm

Sounds like you have an almost-1-year-old in her terrible twos...

The first and most important thing you MUST do is baby-proof your house. I don't mean for safety, I mean for mess. Put locks/rubber bands/twist ties (depending on the kind of handles you have) on all the cabinets. Put up baby gates by rooms you can't easily babyproof. Temporarily take anything you don't want her to get into and put it UP. (This won't work forever, but it will for the time being.) Once the amount of mess she can make is limited, it will be easier to tolerate her exploring.

Babies this age often have a short attention span. So even when you find an activity she likes, it may not last. Still, with that being said, here's some tried and true stuff from my house:

- Put baby in sink (we have a double sink) when washing dishes. Baby sits in one side and makes trouble while I wash dishes (warm water only) on the other side.

- Giving tzedakah. My kids LOVE putting pennies in tzedakah boxes. You need to watch that they don't eat them, but it is still a nice calming activity.

If your daughter doesn't like the high chair, maybe she'd rather sit in a booster seat at the table?

When daughter would SCREAM hysterically when eating, we knew it meant not that she wasn't hungry, but that she wanted to feed herself. (My kids started that early.) Let her have a bowl and spoon (unbreakable) and put a mat down on the floor first...

I second the idea to try a sling. Some kids need more mommy contact than others, and a sling is one way to get stuff done while holding baby. (They don't work for everyone, but then again NO baby gear does.)

She is young to understand no. My kids always thought it was the funniest word when they were babies. For this age you may need to pull back her hand when saying no.

Hope some of this was helpful, don't worry you're not the only one going through stuff like this! It sounds like your daughter is precocious KA"H and IY"H she'll outgrow most of this pretty quickly, especially once she can communicate. Much nachas!