4 year old Daughters behaviour

[nick99]

i have a four year old daughter and have some issues with her behaviour.  She's quite defiant, loves to wake up at 5am is a fussy eater but the real problem behaviour is between her and my wife. 

What tends to happen on a almost daily basis is my daughter starts to annoy my wife by poking her, generally going out of her way to make her angry.  My wife starts to get really angry, then my daughter ends up throwing a huge tantrum and it just ends up being a complete nightmare.  Now my daughter never does this with me.  We had to move countries because of a family emergency so Im her primary carer whilst my wife works.

My daughter tends to throw these horrible tantrums only when my wife is around.  Never with me.  She's generally well behaved with me and very compliant.  The trigger for defiant and tantrums seems to be my wife.

Now i was previously married and have a son who is now nearly 18.  I had a lot of issues with him when he started school.  His school thought he had Aspergers and I had to go to various doctors and never got a clear diagnosis.  

I'm really stressed thinking I have passed some gene or something onto to my daughter.  She's just started school and has had very good reports with zero issues whilst when my son started school it was a total nightmare from day one.  I really don't want to start taking my daughter to doctors because with my son nothing was ever resolved and I went private and spent a lot of money.

Another thing worth mentioning is if she has a nap in the afternoon and wakes up with Mum home she's wailing and has a massive tantrum.  If she has a nap with just me home and wakes up, nothing, she's perfectly ok.

[Taylor-RO]

Hi @nick99, thank you for sharing. Your siutation sounds difficult and really complex - there may be a lot that is going on here. For this reason, it may be beneficial for your daughter and/or wife to receive support at the doctor or psychologist. As you mentioned, this can be costly, however it might allow you to be able to solve your issue or working towards developing a solution.

Our service is an Australian mental health forum intended for parents of teenagers. As your child is young and you are outside of Australia, our resources and referrals are limited. Other parents are welcome to read your post and they may offer their own support and insights You might like to look at low cost or free services in your country, if you haven't done so already. Some of them appear to offer online/telephone support, like this service here. Please feel welcome to let us know how you go.