AlCookie "Adoptmama - do u really mean to say u wud sit with ur baby all day and anytime u left to run an errand he would cry?? He wouldnt stat busy in his play gym or with his toys even for 10 minutes??
I seriously find that very hard to believe."
Really?
Is your sceptism also the reason for the rude and sarcastic tone of your reply? What exactly is 'seriously hard to believe' - that my child cried if I left them, that I sat with them 'all day' or that I couldn't (or indeed wouldn't) leave them for 10 minutes to 'self entertain' at that age?
What I actually said was a 6 month old can't be expected, as you expressed it, to "self entertain for even 10 minutes" and you simply need to put up with that fact - as you do since you can't actually change it. Normal concentration span is identified by child psychologists as approximately 5 mintues (maximum) per year of life. Your infant can therefore be expected to concentrate and 'self entertain' for about 1.5-2.5 minutes. You are actually expecting your infant to display the concentration of a 2-3 year old. He can't. That is why he quickly loses interest in 'self entertaining' and looks for the reassuring figure of his mother.
A 6 month old infant is just beginning to start to comprehend he exists separately from the mother. That is the reason for his anxiety increasing when he is separated from you. What I said to you was that it is normal to have a velcro baby stage. It's how babies are.
Did my children go through stages of crying if I left them - yes. Did I sometimes have to have them with me glued to my side whilst I did things? Yes. Including doing the laundry, making the beds and going for a pee. It's part of life with a young child. Whether you find that "seriously hard to believe" is neither here nor there; though I am puzzled why you have chosen to make a thinly veiled attack in reponse to a perfectly civil reply to your thread. Generally speaking it is considered quite rude to essentially accuse someone who has taken the time and effort to respond to your thread of being a liar.
You need to see it from your baby's perspective, even though it is incredibly frustrating to have them go through this behaviour. You know you will return - they don't. They are learning this. And it makes them anxious until they develop that certainty that you are always coming back. And you know you'll only be 10 minutes, but your 6 month old doesn't - all he knows is that you have left. He has no concept of time and no ability to comprehend how long you will be gone by. These are the reasons he cries. Making a sarcastic and somewhat scathing comment to me questioning how I parented my children during these stages is not going to change the fact that your baby is going through a normal developmental stage - as all other posters have pointed out - and you need to simply suck it up and get through it.