Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Yes-- what MoN said.

Understand that most other parents, though-- and parenting advice books/experts-- have NO idea what you're up against with a HG+ child who has the memory and determination and self-awareness of a nine or ten year old, harnessed to the empathy, egocentrism, and lack of life experience of a child of this chronological age.

I'm deeply sympathetic-- this was a very lonely and frightening parenting phase for me. HG+ children can truly push their parents into places that most parents cannot even imagine
, and while calling their behavior "manipulative" is mostly incorrect, since it isn't specifically goal-directed toward a particular outcome on the part of another person... they do have superhuman persistence and drive. These are not typical toddlers.

Find a way to safely be able to walk away and count to ten. Seriously. You're going to need it.

What is your childcare situation like? We found that poor childcare settings seemed to put our DD into overdrive to "make up for lost time" during the hours that she was with us. It was brutal.
I agree with this. My first, although HG and intense, was also very much a rule follower. I had no idea that kids could be as persistent as dd6 until I experienced it, and I felt (and still feel) that parents who had not parented a kid like her just did could not understand what it was like. I would encourage you to check out the book Transforming the Difficult Child. I don't like the title, but it was a big relief to me to read it. The analogy most appropriate to my dd and it sounds like yours was a Maserati with Model T breaks. I have moved away from thinking like such a behaviorist as my kids have gotten older, but one trick that did work when dd was doing something dangerous (running away in parking lots) and even the last resort of spanking didn't work, was a bag of smarties. A few times of giving her a smartie every few feet she walked with me and it was never a problem again.