My 2yo massively prefers his dad over me and it's making me quite sad.
I know it's a normal developmental stage and I'm extremely grateful that my DH is such a great, great dad to our little boy, that they have such a beautiful bond. However, he's been like this since he was 18mo (he's 26 months now).
It's all about "dad", whenever I go home after working, first thing he says when he looks at me is "where is dad". In the nighttime, when he wakes up from a bad dream or if he has a fever, he asks for his dad and wants him to cuddle him instead of me (sometimes if I go, he's fighting and pushing me away and crying for his dad). If DH is away from work for a couple of days, DS becomes extremely irritable and upset and I can directly correlate this with him not seeing his father on these days. If he falls and hurts himself, it's dad he asks for.
I'm trying really hard not to let this affect me, but it's so difficult when all my mom friends complain that their DCs only want them - my DS has never really "needed" me like this. I've read that this could be because DH works long hours and I'm more available (working PT), but my mom friends are in the exact same boat.
I would say that due to spending more hours with my DS, I often have to cook/fold laundry/do chores when I'm looking after him, whereas when my husband is home he can solely focus on playing with DS/having one-on-one time with him. But then again the situation with most of my friends is exactly the same.
I'm an extremely family oriented person and I try to be a really good mom to my DS - we go to toddler groups together, I come up with different crafts for him, we play, sing, dance together. We go to little "coffee dates", we read together, we do rough play - in short we have lots of fun. I also read a lot on parenting and try to improve myself and don't want to project any sort of expectations on my DS. However despite all my effort, he prefers his dad massively over me and even though I know that parenting is a thankless task, I have to admit I did expect that my DS will be a bit more attached to me (and again, I'm seeing this with many other moms so it's definitely possible).
Has anyone else experienced this?