Wodering about my three year old

[sukilove]

My three year old, who is by nature, a strong spirited child. Yet she has a real sweet disposition.
The last while it is going. she is soo difficult argues with everything, refuses to listen period even when I have tried time outs, put her in her crib, closed the door, taken away toys, on and on to no avail. I now find myself yelling llouder and louder. She hits her father, me as well. Tells as to go away, she does not like us etc. And to top it off never sleeps through the night. I am trying sooo hard to assess what is wrong? and I know part of it must come from anxiety, as her dad and I are splitting, we were to our seperate ways last year, but gave it another go, moved to a new city tha we love, and family at home was very dysfucnctional. Yet even though I feel content for the most part, my husband is not and we keep butting heads, and getting angry in from of her, and when she is in bed. I try to refrain but with no sleep, and the way she has been acting it wears up both think and we are highly stressed.

I guess to sum it up is I just want my girl to be healthy and happy, and not to screw her up beyond!!  The parental guilt is so hard.  The last few days she has started to wipe her pooh on the wall, which was shcoking as she knows better. But when I googled it thinking I must be the only one, no a lot of older kids do it. That said it is not right and I just could really sue some advice/

[Sandman2]

   Its really too early to tell if she has ADHD (assuming that is why you are writing here).  However, on the child behavior forum - http://www.medhelp.org/forums/Child-Behavior/show/64 - you will find lots of posts and good responses for similar problems.
   Stress and anxiety will cause problems.  Little kids are sensitive to that and don't have any adequate means to express that.  And of course, her stress adds to your stress which adds to hers, etc.  Some of what she is doing can be adequately taken care of with timeouts (if they are correctly done).  This means they must be immediate, and consistent.  Do not expect overnight success.  Experts say it will take up to 3 weeks to change a learned behavior - which is what you are trying to do.  A really good book that goes into detail on making the timeouts work is,  "SOS Help for Parents," by Lynn Clark.
  I can't be much help on her not sleeping through the night. Except to say to make sure that she has a schedule and keep to it.  Don't sleep in too late,  shorter naps, read to her before putting her to bed, and maybe not putting her in bed too early.  You will find lots of help for this problem (and others) on the child behavior forum.
  Hope this helps a bit.  Happy holidays!!

[sukilove]

excuse the spelling mistakes, my computer is on the brink.