Sudden separation anxiety in 3 year old

[Ek3009]

My little girl turned 3 last month.

since she was 1 she has always stayed at her grans on a Sunday night. We drop her in about dinner time and she stays over as I need to be at work for 6am on a Monday so it’s just makes sense.

A few weeks ago she decided she didn’t want to stay. She has always absolutely loved staying and never even looked back when we have left. We would never force her to stay when she doesn’t want to so we took her home. She had not been very well for a week or 2 and just assumed she still wasn’t up to it.

it’s just got worse the last few weeks though to the point I can’t even nip to the shops for 10 mins and leave her with my husband and she just cries until I am home. She needs to be with me everywhere I go.

There has been no major changes or upset in her life and nothing has happened that I can pin point to when it started apart from her not feeling great and it seems to have just spiralled. She has always been absolutely fine with my mum or my husband’s mum but iv just put her to bed and explained tomorrow morning we need to be up early as she will need to go to grans while mummy goes to work and she’s just sobbed herself to sleep saying she doesn’t want to go. I reassure her as much as possible, stay as calm as I can but at times I am fine with her as there really is no other options, I need to go to work!

She starts nursery in January and we have been talking about it a lot lately trying to get her prepared and I’m not sure if this is possibly making her worried?

Any advice would be much appreciated so I can make her feel more secure and also have a shower in peace! 😩

Bumping to see if anyone has any ideas! Only getting worse and I don’t know what I should be doing. I don’t if I should be being firm with her or just accepting this is a phase (hopefully!) for who knows how long and giving in to her. Doing a bit of both just now which probably isn’t helping and giving ever conflicting messages!

I went to the shop for 10 minutes tonight and when I came home she had broke her heart since I left.

Me and her dad are now arguing (not in front of her) as he’s upset he feels he’s not good enough and can’t do anything and I am just worn out as I literally can’t go for a pee without her following me. We have totally different ways of looking at it and different ways we want to handle it but at the end of the day our daughter is what’s most important. I just don’t want to do any further damage by doing the wrong thing so any help would be much appreciated.

There comes an age when small children develop the ability to imagine what is happening somewhere else. When this happens they start to wonder what you are doing after you leave them. This is quite likely what is happening here. Its a phase.