All thoughts on mini-PPHs excessive and knackering clinginess gratefully received...

[PrincessPeaHead]

This may be long

MiniPPH (15 months) is clingy beyond belief, and it is getting to the stage where it is seriously hampering my ability to get anything done, my ability to do much with the other children, and my enjoyment of her. Which isn't good. And I don't understand why or what I can do about it (if anything), so I thought I'd tap into the combined wisdom of MNetters as I'm sure someone will be able to shine a light...

She has been pretty shy from a v early age, never really liked strangers, does that princess diana thing of no eye contact but peep under her eyelashes every so often to see if they are still there. Definition of strangers very wide and includes grandmothers if she hasn't seen them for a fortnight. Basically the people she feels comfortable with are those she sees every day - me, dh, children, nanny, cleaner and gardener. She loves all of those and is as demanding with them a she is with me.

At Xmas (11months) we had 20 people for lunch, all close family (grandparents, aunts uncles and cousins) and I spent most of it with her in a room by ourselves because she was so distraught at all of these people LOOKING at her and god forbid talking to her.

Now she is really only happy and content if one of the favoured adults is carrying her on a hip, or sitting right beside her as she plays. For short periods of time if she is in the middle of some interesting play she might allow you to get up and walk to the other side of the room to do something without screaming blue murder, but if you leave the room she goes mad.

She is a particular daddys girl and if I'm sitting beside her on the floor playing quietly and DH walks in, says something to me and goes away again she is INCONSOLABLE until he comes back and picks her up.

It has now got to the stage where if you are standing up with her on your hip and you dare to sit down (with her still on your lap), she goes bananas - screams, throws herself about, goes red in the face, tears - the MOMENT you stand up again it all switches off like a tap and she sits quietly with a slightly outraged expression on her face that you should have committed such a crime.

If you put her on the floor to do something (take a boiling saucepan off the floor, butter toast which you CAN'T do with a child on your hip) she screams, cries and often bangs her forehead on the ground. We have a stone floor in the kitchen and she often has big lumpy eggs on her head.

She is a big girl, can walk but gets hardly any practice because she insists on being carried. She weighs a ton and I now have sciatica quite badly, probably because my hip is thrown out all the time carrying her.

Basically I'm not enjoying her at this stage at all, it is very wearing on me and on the other three children who are effectively living with a tyrant ordering all the adults about despite their needs, and I really need to know
a) if there is anything I can do to manage her a bit to either make this stage more bearable or (holy grail) actually break this habit and/or
b) if it is just a stage, HOW LONG WILL IT LAST????

None of my others were like this at all and I don't think I've done anything differently with her. I don't leave babies to scream for anything - my modus operandi is to meet their needs and make them feel loved and secure but in my other three that actually made for happy little toddlers who were really independent and happy to do their own thing as long as they knew where you were (ie bird happy if you were in the same room albeit doing something dull like making lunch).

Please help!
Thanks for reading this far, my most epic post ever, in 4 years of mumsnetting

lol malory I assume that is a typo and you don't have some sort of tour de france fetish going on...

hello MI
it is knackering isn't it?

Ah, I've just seen that you think it's a bit more than that.

Can't help then really but god, you have got to get her used to being left to it, it would drive me MAD.

(btw, I go to the loo in peace too Malory, always have done, children just have to wait for me! I started a whole thread abotu it once, saddo that I am)

hi www

yes I assume the stranger wariness will last for some time. as I say my dd1 was a little bit like that (but not so much)

I think if I can just deal with the picking up/needing to be carried thing at home, life will improve. she is SUCH a big girl - 15 months but growing out of 18-24 and wearing some 2-3 clothes already. She must weigh 2.5 stone easily and she is tall

oh that does sound demanding (the sitting right there while she plays). She does sound like she is very much her own little person already.

think your distraction technique (the toothbrush thing) sounds spot on

hey I'm not talking about dumping in peace, I'm talking about dumping with her sitting quietly (I wish) at my feet instead of actually sitting on my lap!!!

v difficult to wipe your bottom while holding onto an enormous 1 yr old on your lap

What about having a bag of unexpected things to give her as you get up? So she has to pull them all out to inspect?

Oh dear re at your feet, it would drive me insane. As would the screaming I presume you'd get if you did anything else. Can't you get the gardener/cleaner to take her while you poo

that would be MUCH easier, yes, thank you Malory now why didn't I think of that?

www that is a really good idea - an interesting bag of interesting things which she only got given when she was on the floor by herself... hmmm. might try that, thank you.... inspired

oh bugger dh has just told me we are going to someone's house for lunch (fine) but that he promised I'd bring pudding (not fine)

sigh

if anyone has any more thoughts I would be INCREDIBLY grateful to hear them, thank you all x

My ds was like this (he is now nearly 4) and it drove me to despair. I remember one particularly awful day when I had gastroenteritis (caught from darling ds!) and had to sit on the loo with ds on my lap! not pleasant
It got a lot better as he got older tbh and since he started pre school last september he is even better - he actually played on his own making up stories with his trains for 10 mins this morning !!!!!!!!!!! Hurrah!!
It is a phase, but it is exhausting and I sympathise.
In 6 months I think you will see a difference in her.
Good luck

Ah, a velcro baby.

Many ways of dealing with this are impractical if you have other children - eg when you put her down and tantrum starts, leg it from the room.

Does she have a favourite toy/dummy/cup that can stay only on the highchair/playpen (playpen v good idea)? Unfortunately the head banging thing she will only grow out of when she's ready and I do think ignoring it is the best idea. Can you and she go out and buy a special wee stool for her to sit on (esp in kitchen?) The bag of Very Interesting Stuff is a good idea too - could she have her own drawer/shelf of things in the kitchen? To get a bit pop psychologist on you, if she's the youngest of four, perhaps the only thing in her life she can control or put her stamp on is you and her dad?

The thing that occurs to me about getting her sorted out with independence at home is that it may not matter to her a jot if she's home or not - you can't be certain how her mind is prioritising... I mean, you wouldn't potty train 'just at home' would you, because with kids it's usually simpler to go with an all-or-nothing approach. (hence bag idea better than my kitchen drawer idea!)

I think you need to isolate the deal breakers and go from there - what are you and aren't you prepared to compromise on? FWIW, I think your MO is spot on.

I have looked after several velcros and, whilst delightful, they can slow down your day and speed up your temper. I also believe them to provide 90% of your average chiropractor's/osteopath's income.

Poor mini PPH - by the end of this thread she'll have a handbag, a helmet and a headache!

Not much older than 18 month IIRC.

Blimey PPH think you are pretty saintly not to have sent her off to relatives/boarding school or something already. Can see it makes sense to just do what she wants as you have older children to look after. Agree re playpen in the kitchen to stop the floor thing - she may well not want to go in it but if she's too little to climb out then at least it is somewhere safe for her to be.

FWIW my sister used to headbang and have TERRIBLE tantrums then just grew out of it. Although I can't remember how old she was, sorry.

You say she's just as demanding with her other favoured adults - does she insist on being carried by whoever she is with or is it mainly you? Does your nanny have any ideas (I'm assuming she's got experience of a lot of children and when it isn't actually your own child it's easier to see what's going on, sometimes)? If nanny hasn't come up with suggestions, maybe it's because she's too polite and needs to be encouraged?

I suspect childcare gurus might say you need to take charge and stop her getting away with this, because children actually like grown ups to be in control, even if they don't act like it. But I'm not a childcare guru so may be talking bollocks.

Think this may be one for St Tanya of Bryon, can you google her and find any relevant advice?

DS2 was like this. But he didn't head bang on the floor, he'd find the sharpest wooden edge or corner of a wall to bang on. It was terrifying. I once had to leave him with my bestfriend for 4 hours because I had to go to a meeting that I couldn't take him to. He cried and head banged for 4 solid hours. DP works abroad and DS2 refused to sit on his Dad's knee for 6 months at one point and would only stay stuck to me.

I joined a group at one point because it had a creche run by DS1's nursery staff. DS2 had seen these people almost everyday since birth and stayed and played at the nursery for a while every morning, but he still would not be left. He was the only child who had to be returned to his mother because the head banging was too scary.

In the end he grew out of it, but it is such a pain. He is a large child too and I had to strap him on with a ring sling a lot of the time because that helped my back.

I'm afraid that it was only time in the end that made a difference. He's still my clingier child, we call him the limpet, he's 6! I work at his school, I saw him in the playground one lunchtime last week and he told me very seriously that he wanted to come up to my classroom because 'I like you more than I like my friends, Mummy'. He does play happily with his friends, and he's even done sleepovers at friend's houses. I think he slept over at Dinosaur's when he was 4.

I can't remember exactly when he began to get easier because it was so gradual but it does get better.

head bangers are determined little ones - I think ds finally grew out of head banging (with us ignoring it) when coming out the other end of the 2s but my goodness, he'd push and push and push. Like becaroo, we saw a marked improvement when ds started pre-school.

My gut feeling is that you might have to ride this out (apart from the hip carrying, which has to stop for the sake of your health) until she's just a bit older. I wonder very much whether she's not a bit tired a lot of the time- you mentioned that she dropped a morning nap early, and when I look back at ds's behaviour as a toddler it's abundantly clear that he was actually permanently knackered. My guess is that when she reaches an age when a) she is more robust in terms of needing sleep and b) more verbal and able to understand reasoning things will get better on their own to a large extent . I do like www's bag idea.

Many sympathies, I can completely understand what it's like, and awful if you're having to feel guilty about the other children at the same time.

Also, if you go for putting her down where she head bangs, set a timer and every 2 minutes,or however long you can stand, bend down and give her a quick cuddle on the floor.

You need a timer that give a loud ping/ding/ring/beep so she'll hear it amidst her distress. The point of this is that she knows she's not abandoned but isn't getting her way (see everything ever written about sleep training.) She needs to hear the thing go off as her cue - you may find after a day or so she'll calm down for a moment when it goes off because she knows a cuddle is coming. This helps you because it reinforces what you already know - she can stop crying in a second if things are going her way, ie this is annoyance, not heart broken sadness. Then you can begin to up the time between cuddles.

This sounds like the ideas of an utter madwoman but I have done similar things myself and it has worked.

I went to the Pavlov School of Childcare, obv.

Or, can you just stairgate her out of the kitchen and make it a no go zone?

you are all wonderful, am printing whole thread out to read on my way to lunch, will reply later

thank you thank you I do really appreciate it. all further thoughts gratefully received x

Sounds awfully wearing. It's a terrible feeling when you want to enjoy your child but their behaviour makes it difficult.

DD was clingy early on. If I needed to crack on with something, I would make sure she was near me, but not on my hip. So if in the kitchen, would sit her on the widest part of the counter so we could talk/she could watch what I was doing. Or, I would put her in her TrippTrapp and drag it close to where I was. Being physically close seemed to gradually substitute for being carried. (Confining your dd to counter-sitting or high chair might prevent the floor headbanging?).

What if you sit dd close to you, and then give her something to do - books, pencil/paper, playdough, paints etc. She might get engaged in the activity. Or what if you hand her something interesting while you move 2 feet away so that she is intrigued by the item? Can you use the toothbrush idea as an upfront distraction/occupier rather than a mid-tantrum thing?

It sounds like an older version of the child who wants to be nursed to sleep. It might work to use an 'older child' version of controlled crying to teach her that you are responding to her, but she can't be constantly carried. I also think you're going to have to help her/teach her to cope. Some kids do it naturally on their own (says me with only one dc!), and some kids need to be given some coping strategies. For instance, if dd started to cry, I would hand her a comfort item (favourite soft toy, her blanket, or her dummy in early days) which she could use to calm herself down. So, I was responding to her distress, but not making myself the only solution.

Oh one other thing - from a very early age, I would tell dd when I was leaving the room. If I just walked out she'd panic/cry, but if I said "I'm going to the kitchen for a minute and I'll be right back" she was fine. But of course, to build trust you have to ensure that you do come right back!

No idea if any of these would help, and you might have tried them all already, but maybe worth a go. What does your nanny suggest?

He did, Doddle, he did, although I seem to remember that it was touch and go right up to the last minute whether he'd come or not!

PPH, my DS3 is very shy as well, and I think he would be very shy even if he didn't have other developmental problems, iyswim. But he is actually getting better with other adults now, at the age of 2.8. Sympathies, though, what you are going through with Dd sounds very wearing, and physically knackering. Perhaps it's time to introduce her to the Teletubbies?

pph my dd3 (my 4th) is exactly the same. She is only really happy sitting on my knee playing with my hair while she sucks her thumb. She is capable of the most terrifying tantrums when I try and move. I do carry her around in a ring sling sometimes (when I want to cook etc), but she is 2.3 now and very heavy!

She only wants to be with me (she is not a daddy's girl unfortunately). She isn't shy - but she is unhappy and cross most of the time. If I put her down at a toddler group, she attacks the other children.

I work 2 days a week and apparently at nursery she is a delight! I don't have an answer I'm afraid, but I can empathise - I am close to wishing the time away until she is at nursery every day.