My toddler is channelling her inner teenager

Well, we've hit toddlerhood with a bang.

Lately, darling daughter has been asserting her personality. She has no qualms telling us her dislikes. She dislikes the word no. The word no will usually provoke a tantrum of some sort. Tears will be produced, the hands will immediately fly to the face, covering the eyes and sometimes she'll just fall to the floor in despair. Dear husband doesn't believe me that this is typical toddler behaviour. He is convinced that she, and I quote, "learned it from some other kid."

Another dislike of darling daughter's is bedtime. In her books, a 7:30 p.m. bedtime is much too early. According to her, bedtime should be at 8:30 p.m. A couple of times last week she got her own way by crying, resulting in dear husband giving into her demands. But eventually it got too much for dear husband and I (as bad cop) had to put my foot down before it got out of control.

While she doesn't like the word no, she says it a lot to us. No, no, no. Nooooooooooo. And my favourite, NO! I hear a lot of the word no during the day.

Sometimes I feel like I can't even eat in front of darling daughter. Despite the fact I feed her a well balance lunch, she usually come over to me while I'm trying to scarf down a sandwich, demanding food. Today I finally got smart and grabbed her a piece of bread to give her while trying to eat.

I know the teenage years seems like a million years away, but I honestly think she is channelling her inner teenager these days with the attitude, demands as well as her propensity to test boundaries and her increased appetite. Perhaps the toddler years are a dry run for what is to come during the teenage years. At least now I can wrangle a 18 month old. I don't think I can do that with a 15 year old.