Hello everyone. I’m after some advice about my DD who is 3 next month. I will preface all of this by saying I am hugely sleep deprived thanks to 9mo DS who has woken hourly for five months so I’m not thinking completely straight at the moment. That said, I have felt there was something a bit different about DD since she was a young baby and having a second baby has made that a bit more apparent.
So, DD has always been very strongwilled - she has a strong character and this has been commented on by friends, family and daycare workers - she has been in daycare 3 days per week since 7 months.
As a baby, I felt it was really hard work to keep her entertained. She constantly sought out stimulation and would not sit in her pram, on a lap for example and observe, just constantly wriggled and reached for things. I noticed this from about a month old - she just seemed more intense than friends’ babies.
As a baby, she only wanted me to hold her. Now, at 3, there are very few people I can leave her with and when I do leave, she is very distressed. She will not talk to strangers and will look at the ground when they speak to her. Occasionally, she will just spin on her heel and face the other way when strangers try to speak to her. She also considers friends we see infrequently as strangers. I often worry people think she is really rude.
She really thrives on routine. She sleeps well, but if we take her e,g, on holiday, she really struggles with the change. Although she seems happy day to day, her behaviour worsens, we see more tantrums, and she wakes crying in the night.
If anything surprises her, even a nice surprise, it is like she doesn’t know how to react. For example, if someone gives her a present she loves, she sort of screws her face up like she’s trying to control her reaction. Later, she will tell me how much she loves xyz, but in the moment, she shys away from it. I CANNOT get her to thank people for presents, even though her manners are generally good (usually remembers please and thank you without prompting)
Tantrums - started at 10 months. Went through a phase at around 2.5 where she was having 5 or 6 major tantrums a day. Now we have maybe one a day, sometimes we get through a day without one. But they are now more intense, not just frustration but true anger is coming out. She occasionally visibly shakes with anger.
Her speech is really good. She was speaking fluently at 2.5 and chatters all day long to us at home (although we have friends who don’t realise she can speak!) She comes out with what I think are quite complex sentences (“I’d better put my wellies on today, otherwise my feet will get all soggy” was one today.) Daycare worker has said her language is very advanced and it is like talking to a little adult.
Socially however, I feel she is quite immature. She still prefers to play alongside other children and often seems to be a bit of an outsider. She likes other kids and will refer to them as friends, and they definitely seem to like her. I just feel she wouldn;t be bothered whether they were there or not (and would maybe prefer not!) She often blanks them when they speak to her.
She doesn’t seem bothered about any of her toys. She hasn’t yet got into role play type stuff - we have a toy till, market place, kitchen stuff - doesn’t play with it. She does role play with baby dolls a bit. Quite likes blocks and construction stuff. Played with her trainset once. Put together a puzzle once. Loves books. Loves cuddly toys. She either wants to be outside doing gross motor stuff, or watching TV.
She is, I feel, obsessed with TV. She would watch it all day if I let her, and would watch the same show. When it’s on, she is really hard to communicate with. It is like talking to a brick wall. So of course I limit it but really I just take her out of the house because if I try to redirect her to another activity we often have a tantrum.
She started drawing really well about a month ago, actual figures with faces and animals that you could tell what they were. I was SO impressed… but now she has gone back to scribbling and takes no pleasure in it at all… it is bizarre! If I sit down to draw with her, she just wants me to draw, and when I encourage her,she says she can’t and gets upset.
If we turn up to meet with friends and their kids and she hasn’t seen them in a while, I can see she is shy/ uncomfortable, and she will sometimes just start doing something totally random e.g. hanging off my leg and laughing, throwing herself on the floor and giggling, chucking her stuffed toy around. I often feel she is ‘odd’ in the company of other children and that other parents are thinking ‘wtf’.
This is what has prompted me to write this today- 3 weeks ago she was moved from the toddler room (0-2) to the kindy room (2-4) at daycare. They move by developmental readiness, not chronological age. I hadn’t realised, but she was the oldest in the toddler room by about 6 months. None of the other kids in there could talk. She just loved the staff and helped them with the babies and played in the sand. They had tried to move her several times and she became upset. But she now has to move because she’s way too big for that room. I was really emotional to realise that a lot of the kids in the ‘big kids’ room were quite a bit younger than her. So we transitioned her. She has screamed every morning for 3 weeks. She has started asking me if it is daycare day the night before and crying the night before. Apparently after about half an hour, she is fine and she is always very happy when I collect her. But every morning is the same. She cannot cope with this change. In 10 weeks we are moving back to the UK from overseas and I’m dreading it, purely because I’m so terrified of the effect changing her whole little world will have. I’ve decided to just pull her out of daycare because she doesn’t really need to go, it isn’t worth the stress.
I just don’t know what to ‘do’ with her to help her right now. I don’t even know what I’m asking - I suppose, does any of the above point to a problem, or is she just ‘within the range of normal’ for a 3 year old? She is so, so gorgeous and I will always love her for exactly who she is. I just often feel like she is a stranger that I don’t know how to navigate and everyone else’s kids seem so much more straightforward. Often when DS is actually sleeping, I’m just lying awake thinking about little DD :(