At what point to seek help

[Bluesycamore]

Posting for a bit of advice as none of my friends are in a similar situation. My (just turned) 4yo is very highly strung. She needs a lot of attention which is fine, she’s very bright and great company, funny and affectionate, but also very anxious with anyone she doesn’t know extremely well and in any new situation (eg birthday parties). This is all fine and just put it down to who she is. The impact on daily life is now getting me down. I think it’s gradually been getting worse just over the last month. Every dinner time she refuses the food, causes a big storm and then seems to do anything to seek attention - she already gets loads as we sit at the table and talk with her etc. also hair washing - have the special crown etc but she screams blue murder in absolute terror even at the thought. We offer to let her do it herself, use a sponge etc but nothing helps. All the screaming just makes me feel sick people walking past would think she was being tortured. She’s also started poo withholding- we’d had this before and was doing so well but seemed to regress again and now keeps refusing to go even though she so obviously needs it. I feel a bit broken tonight. I have friends with similar age children and nothing to suggest they have the same sort of situation. I have spoken to the HV but she didn’t seem overly alarmed. Maybe I am jumping the gun and we will move past it but I don’t know when I should seek help. I don’t want her living life in fear of day to day things.

Sorry that was a longer post than I anticipated!

Hiya. I’m struggling similarly with my 4yo son.
with school looming I’m dreading the fact that he flat out refuses to poo on the toilet. It’s been a common theme for the whole year since we started potty training.
he withholds his poo for days, and so we now have him on Lactolase, which seems to just make him stinky, runny, and he still won’t release on the potty.

I was wondering if you found any solutions to your daughter’s issues. I am at the end of my patience, and with absolutely no incentives and no approach making a dent in his withholding I really don’t know what to do.

@Lozabethxander sorry to hear that it’s so frustrating. I felt absolutely broken by it on top of all the other things. Things have improved loads for us. Not sure if it’s the same for you but the withholding led to pooing being a lot more difficult so she was scared to do it so it was a vicious cycle. The thing that really changed it for us for stopping lactulose and moving onto movicol. We saw a different doctor and he said lactulose can actually increase bulk which we didn’t want so movicol was more suited to my DD issue. At first seemed to have no affect but this is because my husband had been advised by our pharmacist that we could mix it with yoghurt first. I was reading up a few weeks later and it said it must be mixed with water before any further “hiding” and after a few days mixing it in a drink things got so much better. Unfortunately it seems she’s on for for the reasonably long term but so much better than it was before