Questions
I am quite upset about something that the nanny and my husband keep telling me, and I want to get your expert point of view. Apparently my soon to be 3yo daughter is very attached to me. When she comes home from preschool or from the park with the nanny, she is looking for me and if I am not home or at work, she gets very upset and cries. But I don’t recall her doing this last year. She started preschool in mid-January and it went sooo smooth! She cried for a tiny bit the first week and now she cheers loudly when we get to school and when she comes home she always happily exclaims “I love school”!
My husband and the nanny say that my daughter and I were too close when she was a newborn, that it was just me and her for 24hrs and now this is the price we pay, and she is “suffering” all the consequences of how I was with her.
I don’t know, but to me, she is a very confident and securely attached toddler. She has a very different temperament to my son, very assertive and fierce.
I would love to get your view as the actual child development expert. I feel the other persons say these things out of their own frustration for specific situations when she is asking for me or cries for me, and they feel helpless because they can’t calm her, etc. Can you actually spend “too much time” with your newborn so they become “damaged” for the rest of their lives?
In addition, do you have insight into what could have caused this recent habit of her crying for me more often than before and not letting other caregivers calm her down?
Some advice to help them deal with those meltdowns? Because I will be working more in the near future and want to make sure I support everyone as much as I can. Thank you.
Answer
What she is actually doing is showing her Big Feeling of disappointment when the pattern of what happens after school is not predictable.
For children 1-7 the pattern of routine creates safety. She has a pattern in mind which includes reuniting with you after school. When that does not happen she is flooded with disappointment and there is the tantrum and loss of affect.
So what can you do?
Make sure that in the morning and when she gets picked up she is told that you won’t be home when she returns. That way she’s not surprised.
If she cries, all the person who is with her has to say is, “Yes, you miss your mommy. Mommy is working.“ Then silence and just waiting for her emotion to move through her. Being disappointed that she can’t be with mommy is not suffering. It’s natural human emotion in “27 months old” style. Make sure that everyone around knows this and doesn’t act like her disappointment is a big deal or something to fix.
The minute the after school routine gets consistent - you work on predictable days and the more we predict for her the less disappointment she will feel.