Cankerous Daughter

Hi,

I am Dad to a 3 Year old incredibly strong willed 3 year old.

She has been a pretty difficult kid since birth and the terrible twos were pretty hard work, but she is 3 and a bit and there is no sign of improvement from the time she was 18 months to now and if anything in lots of ways things are getting worse.

The current challenge is that she won't sleep during the day or if she does she is awake till 9pm, fine we don't give her a sleep, but this makes dinner really difficult, and the hour before REALLY hard. The big thing is that now she knows that if she gets upset she can make herself cough which if left for a few minutes becomes vomitting from choking.

This basically means that upsetting her results in being faced with her throwing up which doesn't seem to bother her, but is messy and horrible.

She hasn't consistently slept through the night since birth and for a long time all that was required was for ME to go into her room, give her a brief touch and she would go back to sleep. Now instead she gets up and wants into our bed, and if we try and take her back to her bed, she cries until she chokes and if we ignore that, vomits.

Last night nearly broke the camels back as her crying woke my 5 year old, so after she finally settled to sleep in between my wife and I, at 5:30am, my son came in at 6am. Normally they both sleep till 7:30am.

I am unsure how to deal with my daughter, because being firm results in tears, choking and being sick.

Needless to say, as much as I love her, I am not having much fun, because I am not getting quality sleeps and she is so strong willed (dare I say difficult), but our consequence model doesn't work unless we are prepared for her to be sick!

I don't have a strong stomach and vomit is my limit.

Help!