when do babies become clingy?

[kittypower]

My DS is 15 weeks old and in the last couple of weeks it seems like he is getting clingy, doesn't want to really be held by anyone other than DH and me. I really don't want him to become really clingy, is there anything I can do to encourage him not to be? Also is 15 weeks too early for this to show, maybe it was something else?

It really does vary. Some babies are always clingy, some never are, and others go through various phases of greater or lesser clinginess.

The best way to approach it IMO is to make sure he's exposed to and sees a lot of people, but not to force him to do anything (being held by someone, for example) that he's unhappy about. The more secure and confident he is in the fact that you and your DH are there for him and utterly to be relied upon, the more secure and confident he will end up in general.

He could also be teething, which might well make him more unhappy and clingy anyway.

My DD started being clingy around the same time as yours kitty. I really wanted to get her to be happy being left with her Granny and Grandpa - so we would visit them nearly every day to get her used to them. She's still not good with lots of people all wanting a "shot of the baby" so I try to ease her in gently by keeping her with me to start with until she sems relaxed then she is better at going to other people.

Congratulations! He now recognises you are mummy and daddy and are the people he can rely on to magically make bad feelings go away. Agree that all children are different. My two nieces have been treated the same way but one has never been clingy at all, while the other still has clingy phases at 5.

Counterintuitive though it may seem, IMO the more clingy a child is, the more you need to let them cling whilst, as the other posters have said, exposing him to other people as much as possible. If you try to make him more independent of you, especially while he is still so tiny, I think he is likely to become more insecure and anxious and so more rather than less clingy.

Is he clingy in particular situations? My DD is only really clingy when she's tired or there are too may people tryig to get a piece of her so I try to manage those situations rather to make them less upsetting for her.