DS has just turned 2 and is a confident, happy boy most of the town. He's always been a bit shy and cautious - taking a while to warm up in new places / with new people and watching before joining in with new activities. He's recently gotten extremely fearful of certain things to the extent he fixates on these fears for hours and wants to stay indoors rather than risk encountering these things.
Examples: we're currently on holiday with family at a small lake with other families around. He enjoyed playing down at the beach very much the first several days, but now is so worried he'll see a dog there, as he did the first day, that he nearly refuses to play there saying "home to the house, no dog" again and again. We can distract him a bit, but the subject keeps coming up until we go back to the house. Today I said we only had a few hours to play before a storm was due and we had to leave bright blue skies because of repeated "inside! No storm!" We didn't know he knew the word storm and he's never been scared of weather before.
His language and his memory has come on leaps and bounds lately, and I suspect his capacity to worry has just come along in turn, but I'd be eager to know if this is par for the course and what the best response is. Usually with fears I say it's ok to be scared and tell him how his dad and I will make sure he's safe. "if a dog comes, we'll pick you up". But I find with this extreme fearfulness I'm saying "there's nothing to worry about, you're ok" when he clearly feels anything but. And I worry both about forcing him to stay out if he's scared and reinforcing the idea that we're only safe inside by going in. Any advice very gratefully received!
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Behaviour/development
Two year old worries - what's normal and how's best to respond
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HJBeans · 10/08/2015 22:09
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