Ok this isn’t for me but its for a dear friend , she can’t speaK English so I said I would as the community on mumsnet on her behalf .
She has a 12 y/S and a 4yS . The 4y has a kidney disease and is immunodeficient because of his medications which means he has spent a good part of his life stuck at home with mostly his mum and his brother for for company ( covid and all ) he has been going to nursery for the past year but he bas been CONSTANTLY unwell with some cold or infection because , as you can imagine , his immune system is quite weak so we don’t think he has had too much time in there to benefit from it. His father was out of the house all day every for work in his old
job as a delivery driver and now that he is home more often he isn’t .. well.. he isn’t a good father … he doesn’t really play with him , he is short tempered and not very patient . So ultimately I think this child gravitates ALWAYS around his mum ( as you do at 4) . she started to see a child psychologist because they ( she ) have concern over his food fussiness ( he refuses to eat most foods cause his father gave him major anxieties with the whole “ be careful or you will choke “) and the psychologist says his behavioural issues come
mostly from the fact that he is antagonising his parents etc etc ok so they are working on that . This is just to give a context .
my friend is planning to talk about it with the therapist next session ( couple of weeks ?) but I said I could ask now to you guys , she is struggling massively to the point of being very close to a mental breakdown with the fact that this child doesn’t seem to be able
to do independent playing for longer than 3 minutes … if he is watching telly he will scream MUM MUM MUM after few minutes too … when she sends audio messages on WhatsApp he is always in the background screaming like an eagle just for attention … I know she plays with him different games , out in the play ground , has thought of putting him in one of those play group so
he can spend a couple of hours once a week there too ( he gets out of nursery around 2 I think ) but she is mostly stuck with him in the house cause he always has some sort of virus or fever or cold and the doctor is telling her to keep him
home every time he sneezes .
we wonder if it’s normal at his age not to be able to carry on an activity for longer than few minutes without screaming MUM
MUM MUM . I have a 3 year old girl and as much as obviously she wants help and company, if I have to make a 10 minutes phone call I can turn the telly on and know she will give me a break and focus on tht .
my friend is literally depressed and dreading whole days with him , she is also aware she has another son that needs her to and it’s not fair that the 4y sucks everyone’s energy and attention to the point of madness .