5 year old making mummy sad

[samandsophsmam]

Can anyone out there help me I am an emotional wreck! I have a 5 year old dd who has always been a happy, outgoing, chatty and kind of child that will help everyone. She started school last September and I have never really had a problem getting her through the door. Always content to take all her stuff from me and run in to school. The day after boxing day she started not going to sleep, calling down the stairs. Every excuse not to go to bed. That in the last week has calmed down because she thinks I am going to bed at the same time as her. In the last few days I have been forcing her to school, crying, screaming, protesting to every thing. This morning I tried carrying on as normal as she cried from 7.15am. She took her shoes off 20 times and I just calmly put them back on. She makes no real indication of a problem except she needs 'mummy cuddles' Anyone suggest anything at all?? She has to other sisters 4 and nearly 2.

It sounds like there has been some trigger to her anxiety. At this age it can be something simple that they have heard an adult saying, seen on tv or read in a book.

We had a similar experience with our DD when she was about this age. It turned out that she had overheard a conversation between 2 mums at someone elses house about a dad of another child (not in her year at school) who had recently died. My DD was very anxious about bedtime and school because she thought that daddy may die suddenly when she was not there.

I am not sure what advise to give you though as we had been talking to our DD about what was worrying her for over 2 weeks every bedtime before we got to the root of it - and that was by accident when the child who had lost her dads name was mention in another context (she was joining same swimming lessons as DD) and DD started asking questions about how her dad had died (which I did not realise she knew about) and then it came out that this was what was worrying her.

I guess that the best thing to do is to recognise that these is likely to be something that is worrying her - she is not doing it just to annoy you (although I know that it feels like that at the time), and try and be patient and ask her repeatedly if she is worried out something specific.

Agree with pp, looks like something has triggered her anxiety- was it something over the holiday period? Hope you get to the bottom of it soon and you get a happy child again.

She told my mum the other day 'mummy may leave me and never come back' which would kind of make sense if she had heard something like youi said sticklebug. I have tried reassuring her all the time I can that I am not going anywhere! I am going to stay behind tonight at school and talk to her teacher.

Definitely talk to the teacher. It may be that she is fine in class and you would be relieved. The teacher might want to chat with her and might even be able to help get to the bottom of it. She might even have some books she could read to the class on the subject at reading time.

If there is some anxiety that has just struck her about separating from you and worrying that you will never return, you could try some little routine like kissing her hand and then putting the kiss into her pocket so it could stay with her for the school day. DD3 used to like wearing a friendship bracelet that I made for her, and I used to wear its bigger twin. We would clink bracelets when we parted and again when I picked her up.

My DS was at one point very distraught by an after-lunch playtime outside, because all boys are playing football during this time and he felt very lonely and left out (hates football so won't join either). He didn't want to go to school because of these 20 mins after lunchtime which would colour his whole day with anxiety. He would start dreading it early in the morning whilst getting ready for school!

It also took some time to find out what was bothering him, because teachers have a break themselves at this time so weren't aware. So if you go to school, remember to also ask what's going on at lunch and at playtime, and which members of staff you should approach to find out.

In our case the problem was easily fixed by staff offering some other activities and games in addition to football, and DS turned very happy very quickly.

This was when DS was 6y.old