Beck Vass: My daughter is infuriating, just like me

It isn't the first time these similarities have stared me in the face. Photos / Getty

I am preparing for a typical weekday as the exhaustion of five different fights I've already had with my four-year-old washes over me.

I glance in desperation at the microwave clock and am shocked to see it's only 7.24am. She slept in today and has been out of her bedroom just ten minutes.

It's astounding how much energy it takes trying to persuade this irrational, angry being to do anything.

The constant battle over every tiny detail of every single day sucks me dry.

Surely this stuff is meant to be over by age four? She's nearly five. It feels like it's gotten worse.

It starts with going to the toilet first thing in the morning.

Her two-year-old brother has been going to the toilet just fine (so far) and yet I am STILL arguing with her more than two years into it.

Every. Single. Time.

She recently got glasses - a new thing to fight about:

"I don't like feeling things on my face" is among her many complaints.

Then there's the usual: The fight about getting dressed; deciding what to wear. The same battles, over and over, every day.

I have tried taking all her clothes away. I have tried being nice. I have tried stickers. I have tried praising, ignoring, yelling, crying (not all of these were conscious decisions).

I have tried everything. Sometimes a technique will work but she soon gets sick of it and reverts to finding something to argue about.

She looks at me like I am stupid and rolls her eyes because she says it is not raining when it is raining.

That colour isn't purple. It's pink.

I agree with her but she finds another way to disagree.

I DON'T CARE WHAT #*@&ING COLOUR IT IS. IT DOESN'T MATTER!

My screaming is (mostly) silent. An internal ball of frustration tightens in the pit of my stomach.

If this is four, I am terrified of 14.

I continue with the breakfast tidy-up. "Mummy watch me get tall," she says as she stands on her tiptoes. I watch.

"Nooo don't look dooown," she moans.

WTF? I can't even look at her the right way.

Later, my husband arrives home and I tell him: "I can't cope. I can't do this anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to handle it, it's awful," the words spew out of me like complaints from a four-year-old.

"She just argues for the sake of it. She finds something wrong with everything. It's so draining to be around. I'm exhausted."

He gives me a look that, in an instant, says: "That's what it's like being married to you."

It isn't the first time these similarities have stared me in the face.

Someone else recently asked: "Is she a bit like you, do you think?"

Probably, I thought, but that isn't my point. I guess karma really is a b***h.