Reddit mentions of Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime

A couple of thoughts:

1. Quit telling her that she's doing a good job. Tell her instead "you're working hard at that." For a gifted toddler, their vision of what they want will never ever be as good as they can create. You want her to learn that it's about the process, not the product. You really want to avoid praising her for being "smart" (and having others do the same) when she starts school. Read Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset: https://www.mindsetworks.com/parents/default\
   
2. Figure out YOUR boundaries and then when you set them, be firm. Smart kids who can win arguments with you as toddlers NEED clear boundaries that you enforce no matter how hard they tantrum. Like typical 2-5 year olds, they're trying to figure out how the world works. If it works differently on different days or differently if they tantrum vs. not, then they are very unsettled and the unknown makes the world a scary place. I recommend Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's book: Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles. Stanley Greenspan's The Challenging Child also helped me a lot.
   
   1. If dad says no story until something is tidied away and she says "mum can read the book," then your reply is "You need to tidy that away before anyone reads to you." Let the ensuing tantrum happen (see below).
      
   2. For the light example, I'd say "you're right, that one doesn't hurt. What's the difference? Can you always tell the difference? That's why we have to be careful." Not everyone bit of her "defiance" is true defiance. She's trying to figure out the boundaries of her world. She's two and so she's still very very literal. (When my son was two, I told him that all cars had exhaust pipes. He had to check each car we saw for the next week.)
      
3. Give up trying to avoid distress. Instead focus on helping her cope with her distress. I, too, have a super bright, emotionally intense daughter who's now beyond early childhood. She feels deeply, she's easily frustrated, and she has experienced more negative emotions than many other children. I don't want her to feel less, because that's part of who she is. She feels passionately about social justice and is now finally in a position to begin to work with organizations to effect this change.
   
4. Teach your daughter (a) that negative emotions can be withstood and (b) they are not the end of the world. You have to figure out what helps her when she's in distress. For one of my kids, I needed to back off and leave him alone because ANYTHING I did overstimulated him. When he calmed down on his own, we could cuddle and talk. For another, I need to be there to help her calm down (even now as a teen). I would lay down with her on the bed and hum very softly while she sobbed. For helping kids recognize emotions and deal with them, I recommend Dan Siegel's work: The Whole Brain Child and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen by Faber and Mazlish.

All of these people have obviously never had a teacher that hated them. I did, and it was awful. My middle school physics teacher singled me out because of some issue she had with my much older brother who attended the same school 10 years before me. She would pick on me in class, ask me questions about areas I struggled in and ridiculed me in front of the whole class. I hated physics (still do!), had perfect A's in everything else, and barely passed that damned class. It is possible for a teacher to be a total jerk.

You need to work on her attendance issues, and if you can, get her some therapy. Sounds like your little girl is under a lot of stress from the family situation and the school. If you make it a rule that she HAS to go to school unless she has a fever, as well as talk to her about her emotions and empathize with how she feels, maybe she'll be less likely to get sick.

I'd also talk to a doctor (maybe just a therapist/child psychologist) so you have their professional opinion to report to the teacher. If a psychologist decides that your daughter is under too much stress, and can send a note to the teacher, maybe that will shut her up about being late. I was more often late than not to school, and I never struggled with anything academic in my life (except for damn physics!).

To sum up, there's definitely something emotional and psychological going on here, and you should get professional help, as well as minimize her absences. All these people on here saying that missing 20% of first grade will ruin her life should stfu. I missed a lot of school due to serious illness (weeks at a time, with the longest absence being 3 weeks), and I was still the best student in class. A person is either smart or not. As long as she is learning to read and write, she'll be fine, just make sure this stressful situation is not permanent for her.

Oh, and read this book about managing your kid's emotions, it has excellent advice! Kids, Parents and Power Struggles