Sensitive child missing everything

[ElmtreeMama]

My 3 and a half yr old has also been a very emotional and sensitive little girl.

She is waiting to be assessed for neurodiversity.

The issue is that she gets very upset about 'missing things' , things like when a plaster falls off she was sob 'I love you my plaster'
This morning she was crying about missing her wee after flushing the toilet.

I'm a stay at home mum, we did attachment parenting, she has good connections with friends and family, there has been no recent trauma big or small that I can think of and she has always been like this to a certain extent but now seems to be getting worse.

She was inconsolable the other day about a dog she saw walking past car when we were driving snd how much she missed it.

We've tried developing comfort items for her but shes not keen.

Any reassurance or advice?

Can you dig a little deeper about what it is she misses about it? Or joke about what would happen if it came back?
"Oh you miss your wee?! Toilet, give that wee back! Oh you won't?! Because it will splash us and get us covered in soggy wee?! Eughh yuk, ok we'll have another wee later"
It might actually be an issue with transitions rather than missing things, so maybe saying "ok, in two minutes we're going to blow your nose and throw the tissue away" might brief her better for not missing her snot for instance.

Does she go to preschool/nursery? Has she started that recently? If so I'd think that she might be missing you at preschool and projecting it onto everything else. Just because she feels a little bit anxious/less secure.

Does she not have any item that she loves? Even something random like a battery? Nothing she's really into or obsessed with? When she gets upset I would keep upbeat like the pp says ie 'aw that dog is having a lovely walk and then going home to his nice comfy bed'. It's teaching her a little bit of positivity and resilience - to be able to cope with 'missing things' by coming up with a positive narrative to understand/explain them.

I don't think it's a big deal tbh, I expect it will be a phase that she'll grow out of. If she's not in preschool though it's something I'd be looking at at this age. She will learn so much from other children and it will really help prepare her for school. She sounds like a real sweetie!

She sounds so sweet. I have autism and develop attachments to "things". I think it's because they are predictable unlike people and feel safer?

That’s autism op. Big emotions in a small body with little control.

my dd was the same at that age. That side of things settled down a bit as dd got older, she’s now 7 and things really started to improve when she was 6. She still has meltdowns over things like this but it’s maybe a few times a week rather than several times a day.

Thats all really helpful thank you!
I feel reassured that shes not the only child to experience such things.
She is incredibly sweet and caring, I'm not allowed to put anything in the bin on its own in case it gets lonely for example.

She is hopefully starting a pre school next month but has just been at home with me so far.

Also I think you may be right about transitions as she has always found those incredibly difficult!

Thanks all again

Thats all really helpful thank you!
I feel reassured that shes not the only child to experience such things.
She is incredibly sweet and caring, I'm not allowed to put anything in the bin on its own in case it gets lonely for example.

She is hopefully starting a pre school next month but has just been at home with me so far.

Also I think you may be right about transitions as she has always found those incredibly difficult!

Thanks all again

Just wanted to jump on here to say I was exactly the same as a little girl! Used to get upset throwing sweet wrappers away in case they were alone in the bin, upset if a stuffed animal was separated from the others etc. I am not autistic just HIGHLY sensitive and (dare I say) emotionally intelligent. I turned into a very anxious teenager and now adult but on the flip side I do also think it is one of my greatest qualities. I am seeing similar traits in my own DD now. My advice would be not to fight it, as for her it genuinely will be upsetting. Validate how she is feeling. Talk about any underlying worries as they come up to prevent bottling up.

I don't agree with previous poster saying "that's autism" i don't think this is an autistic trait, I have a severely autistic son and he's never been attached to anything in his life. I'm also diagnosed and I'm not a particularly sentimental person and don't think I was as a child. But even if it was an autistic trait its weird to go "that's autism" like you can just diagnose it from one trait.. not saying she's not autistic but I don't see anything to suggest it from this behaviour alone.to me it sounds more like anxiety around the concept of things going away in general, like maybe shes realised that things can go and never come back and the thought scares her?

@crispyseaweed7The op said her daughter is being assessed for neurodiversity. ADHD is not diagnosed until the age of 6 or 7, ops daughter is very young so likely to be assessed for autism.

I said autism because this is more typical in girls. My dd was the same at that age and was diagnosed with autism at 4. whats been read here is an autistic trait, along with the anxiety and the difficulty with transition which has been explained over several different examples in the ops post. You read one trait and I read several different ones. As you know, autism is a spectrum and what affects one might not affect another. Ds is also autistic and is not attached to anything, never has been and unlikely to be.

This is excellent advice

My DD was always better when we got her to wave goodbye to things.
She doesn't have ASD (we don't think) but does have other 'issues' (can't think of a better word right now).

It really is a very common symptom of autism.
I remember one of dd's friends who could not thrown things in the bin. They had a plan where they put them on the side next to the bin for 24 hours, and then Mum threw it away. When they had a new bathroom, Mum had to tell him they were keeping the old one in the loft and not throwing it away.

One adult man I know cannot get rid of cuddly toys, so when his son (also autistic) grew out of them and wanted to chuck them (he doesn't get attached to things much) his dad could NOT allow them to leave the house, and they went in a bag in the attic.
Eventually they compromised on giving them to someone else who would love them, and they went to the charity shop. He is a sensible intelligent man, yet he struggled to explain why he could not let go of those toys.

My own dd (autistic but not diagnosed until 16) has all her childhood toys in our attic. I have been able to get rid of very few. And she checks they are still there!
She is slowly starting to let go. She also collects random things, eg Monster cans.

All this just to show that 'irrational' attachment to objects can be very much part of autism.

Waving goodbye to things; giving notice - in a few minutes we will leave that, put that in the bin; empathising - lets give the sweet wrapper a friend so it won't be loney etc all help.