Sounds like the journey home doesn’t do either of you any favours
How about breaking the walk up? Is there a park or square somewhere about halfway between daycare and home where you can stop and have a little rest and snacks there? I think this would do you both a world of good. Just sit and chat about her day without the stress of busses. You can also use this 10/15 minutes to talk about what she wants for dinner so that if she does change her mind then it’ll be on the way home before you’ve actually cooked something else. Make sure she drinks plenty of water too
I cannot overstate however just how crucial it is that you try and get her into the routine of going to the loo as soon as you get in the house. Our one was so against going to the loo unless she was bursting that it really became a vicious circle of negativity. Peeing was associated with pain, stress and anger which meant that she didn’t want to pee, which meant holding it in, which meant more pain, stress & anger, which meant …and so on - even the occasional screaming fit during which she peed herself when she was younger. The routine completely solved all this and totally disassociated the toilet from stress plus taught her that she can actual have control over her body & thus her moods. So much positivity has come from just this simple change.
A couple of things helped to get over the hump. Try and see the bathroom from her point of view - most kids hate bathrooms. They’re not comfortable with being on their own in a small room that smells with the door shut but neither are they entirely comfortable with having their private moments watched over. They’re often cold and sterile.
Ask her what would make the bathroom nicer. Ours decided that one of her soft toys being in there would be good so there’s always a little rabbit called Sally sitting on the radiator and for a while before she got used to the routine Sally would have a pee first & then her. It took less than two weeks to go from screaming meltdown to coming in and going straight to the loo herself without being asked.
As for the actual meal times, yeah it can be a real drag to try and get them to eat but we’ve found that getting her to help with the cooking - fetching stuff from the fridge, holding the jug/cup/pan while I pour things out, holding the timer so she’s in charge of something while it’s boiling or baking - all of this helps massively when it comes to eating because I guess she feels like she’s made the food and made the choices.
Sometimes she’s keen to ‘cook’ sometimes she wants to do something else.
When it comes to actually refusing her food …the pee routine helped hugely with this - she simply felt more comfortable at the table with a newly emptied bladder.
The bribery of a dessert if she finishes everything on her plate usually works with us. It’s not ideal but it seems to be ok, though sometimes it creates conflict when she eats round at her friends’ and they have parents who lay on ice cream even for their little one who has only eaten one bite of a potato and half a meatball. Delayed gratification is really good for her mental development though so we tend to insist on it where we can.
TV is a case in point. Sometimes she wants to watch TV when she comes home (around 4:30pm). She usually eats at 5pm. Her favourite TV programme is a Swedish kids show for pre-schoolers called Bolibompa which is on from 6-6:30pm. So we limit her TV to 30mins per day and when she comes in and wants to watch TV we give her the option of 30 mins of whatever is on the kids channel now or 30 minutes later when Bolibompa is on and she usually chooses Bolibompa and because it’s her choice it isn’t an issue and watches from 6-6:30 and turns it off herself.
And if she’s been really good, eaten all her food, listened and been attentive etc sometimes we surprise her when Bolibompa is finished by saying ‘because you’ve been so good you can watch the next program too’ which is invariably a 15 minute science program aimed at 8-10 year olds so it’s win-win
Basically anything that’s a negative experience you just have to try and put a positive spin on somewhere and pretty soon they work out for themselves that they prefer it that way and everyone is happier, more calm and more comfortable and thus everything goes better
Woah tl:dr
Just be cool honey bunny