Total melt down when other children cry. Expecting a baby in 9 weeks

[becs4444]

Hello,

I am really hoping someone might have some experience to figure out how to best tackle this. My 2 year old son has always been sensitive to loud noises and upset children. He seems to sympathy cry and over the last few weeks (coincidently since starting nursery) it has got impossible. He has a total melt down if another child either cries or makes a loud sudden screaming noise. He is especially sensitive to babies and (yippee) we are expecting one in 9 weeks. He is a very cuddly little boy anyway but just utterly melts down and becomes desperate for a cuddle and closeness with me. I suspect I need to be firm and not dish out cuddles too freely as I don't want to reinforce that this is something to be upset by but to explain why the child is crying and try distraction. But before I leap and put this plan into action I was hoping anyone who has been through this might be able to give me the benefit of their experience. I don't want to make him insecure by seeming to not respond to his needs. But really I don't know how I am going to manage if he is like this with our new baby.

Any opinions or advice would be very helpful.

Many thanks,
Becs x x

Distraction sounds good idea and I often find this effective with my 2 yr old ds if he starts to get upset about something. Personally I wouldn't try to limit cuddles with a 2 yr old though, with the new baby coming soon he may misunderstand and think he is being pushed away because of the baby.

Thanks, yep distraction is a winner so often. It's just with this it is such a complete and total melt down that so far nothing other than complete removal from the child works. Which is obviously not practical at nursery or in sessions such as sing and sign. I regularly have to end play dates because he is in bits. I hope my above message doesn't play down how bad this is. Normaly I am pretty clued up with how to handle things. But in this instance he is really testing my parenting know how.It's not at all like anything else he has found upsetting in the past, he goes from happy and content to utter devastation in the blink of an eye, it's so sudden there isn't the work up to it that would normaly provide a window to use distraction. I feel that I am going to be forced to be a bit hard about it as if I just cuddle and sooth each time, he will 1) find it reinforces his concern and 2) I will simply be unable to tend to two crying children this way everytime. Has ayine else been through this? I haven't seen other children react this way before.

Becs