When your child screams if you leave the room, what do you do?

Do you know how to deal with separation anxiety? Children who desperately feel the need to stay with their moms are more likely to have separation anxiety. This is a form of a mental and emotional insecurity that the child feels when their parents are not around.

The main reason for this separation anxiety can sometimes be related to the early pregnancy trauma. Or it might be something else that the parents go through later in life which indirectly affects your child’s mental state as well. Or it could just be a child going through a period of normal development causing extra anxiety. And sometimes, it’s a clear call for attention.

How do you encourage your child to be ok without you?

No matter what the reason, the most common question that parents end up asking is how to separate yourself from your clingy child.

While the answer to this question might depend on the personal issues as well, some of the common things that should be considered for solving the issue are listed below.

1. Talk to them:

No matter how young your child is, talking to them regardless of their understanding helps big time in terms of counseling.

This will help you in connecting with him/her and eventually they will start to understand your perspective such as doing the house chores or other work that require them not to be clingy. Even better, try to involve them in your daily chores. This will make them feel more confident, keep them busy and show them you trust them.

2. Spend some fun time with them:

This will help in creating a happy environment and mood for your child.

If she is happy and contended from the inside then there will no apparent reason for her to cry all the time or be inseparable towards their parent.

A lot of the parents make this mistake of not doing fun activities with small kids because they think it’s early for this. When in reality, kids crave for their fun and loving attention without which they become sticky.

3. Distract them:

Distracting them from the routine schedule is also a reliable method of separating yourself from a clingy child.

In most of the cases, your child feels suffocated and frustrated in the same environment daily and following the similar routine.

For this purpose, try to participate in some child-friendly courses such as swimming, outdoor play date, a beach day, or buying toys that require motor skills so that your son/daughter will look forward to the enjoyment apart from the boring schedule.

4. Teach them to become social:

Sometimes children act this way because they’re not social and do not have many friends to socialize with.
They remain indoors almost all day or even remain outside with their busy parents but do not find anyone to relate with, play, and socialize. So try to teach them to become social by taking them to family gatherings and play dates so that they will leave your lap and be ok with other people as well.

5. Let them spend time with kids their age:

Spending time with the same age group proves to be a great therapy for clingy kids. This way, they get to involve and engage in the talking and playing with kids with whom they can relate to.

The main thing here to note is they are persistent in their nature and habits because they probably don’t have someone to explore their childhood and abilities that keep them busy for some time.

6. Take out the fear:

Sometimes they simply fear the other people around and are afraid of their attitude and behavior towards them.

There are two things that you can do here:

• Teach them to become friends with children who wish to play with them or interact with other people (i.e. your neighbor, at the bakery saying hello…)
• Teach them to say no to children / people they don’t like without getting scared of them. This will also improve their self-esteem for becoming a confident person in the future.

Clingy kids can get on your nerves.

They are lovely but not to an extent of sticking with you 24/7. So make sure to do something before it becomes too hard and that your child develops this habit of remaining sticky for the rest of the life.

Have you ever dealt with separation anxiety? What did you do to help your child?

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