When does it get better? When does the « no » phase go from « terrible two » to oppositional disorder?

A bit of background. My daughter will be 2 years old come late January, I am nearly a single dad (SO is a night shift nurse, works 9 days out of 14).My daughter learned to speak quite early, the second word she spoke was « no », the first being « daddy ». She’s always been an incredibly energetic baby and walked at 11 monts old, ran at 12 etc. She has been going to daycare for more than a year, is nice to everyone,has never had a bad day when we, her parents, aren’t around. She is always nice at both grannies’ places, polite, talking, playing, putting thing away, eating with utensils etc.But! Ever since she has learned the word « no », it is the answer we get for everything. Now don’t get me wrong, she speaks complete sentences in many instances, counts to 4, knows her colors and all that jazz. What I mean is that nearly whenever we want her to do something, the answer is no. She refuses to listen to us completely. She also has difficulty playing alone, does not watch TV or anything which would help me free up my hand for making dinner, say. She’ll play by herself if I’m in arms reach, but god forbid I ever get up to actually do something around the house.If we do not do whatever activity it is she wants us to do with her, we’ll get a raging, screaming, crying, hitting temper tantrum. Putting her in timeout only intensifies the crisis. She’ll eventually come and hug us sorry after we’ve asked her to do so 20 or so times. We’ll get the same reaction if we take away something because she is making a mess or risking injury. We always try to remain calm and ask her to speak her mind instead of lashing out. Sometimes of course she’ll reach the end of our patience and we’ll end up screaming at her. This has been progressively getting worse and worse and I’m at the point where I don’t know what to do anymore. The only way to keep her quiet and nice is to bend over backwards to her every whim. She’ll pretend to listen to get her way and go right back to doing what I told her not to do (for example, drawing on the sheet of paper instead of the floor) the second I’m not telling her not to do it. I’ll take away her stuff, tell her she can have it back when she plays nice, give it back when she tells me she will and we’re right back where we started, a neverending cycle of me punishing her for her bad behaviour.She’s not in charge here, I am, whether she likes it or not, but I just don’t know how if ever I’ll get the point across in her thick skull. It’s been like this 6 months or more, and it is physically draining, it gets to the point where I can’t wait for her to be in bed or away at daycare. I love my little girl but this has got to stop. via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2SscWyT