My 2 year old is so mean to his father

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My DS (32 months) is very needy and clingy. He has always been a "Mommy's boy" but lately it has become very overwhelming for my husband and myself. I have been a SAHM for the last 6 months and his clinginess has been escalating ever since. If my husband tries to play with him he will throw himself down and scream, "No! Momma!". Also, when we are playing and my husband starts talking to me my DS gets very upset and he will have a tantrum. It is making life after 5 PM and the weekends uncomfortable in our home. I don't know how to react when he behaves like this. Do I continue or stop playing with him? Should I reprimand him for his behavior? I am at a loss because I don't want to hurt our connection but I don't want him to think it's ok to have Mommy's attention 24/7 and I don't want him to think it's ok to treat people like that. On occasion, like right now, he will go to the store with his father alone or play outside or in the garage with him but he will NOT play with toys with him. He will start out playing with him, after I slip away from the room, but within a minute or two he is screaming. Is this common? How can we help him connect with his father?

Try to leave some of his favorite games with him and his dad and have his dad play with him, and then leave the home for a limited period of time. Does he see you and his father affectionate with each other? Make sure he sees you and his dad are a team. If he developed such a strong relationship with you he has the potential to develop one with his father. Also around this age he might be experiencing separation anxiety. There are many articles on the internet about that. If you think there's more to it, talk to one of his therapists to figure out a strategy.

You got a serious case of separation anxiety on your hands. Do NOT feed this monster. Leave him with dad and GET OUT. Don't worry about the screaming. It's manipulation, pure and simple. No matter what, DO NOT rescue your child or his father!! ! I promise it will pass.

My wife and I draw a hard line on these kinds of issues. My CC used to get so angry (18 months, now 19 months) when I drop him off with the babysitter when I had to go to work for a couple of hours. He does just fine now.

He's been sick lately, and a different sitter we use during choir practice came to me in the middle of practice (mom was out of town on business) saying she thought we need to take him to the emergency room. ??? Um...NO...he's got a nasty cold, just woke up from a nap, is still groggy and confused because he's not in a familiar environment...and feels like crap besides. Give him some water and some crackers and he'll be right as rain.

Point being kids do crazy things like that at that age. There's a reason why we call them the "terrible twos." Let 'em scream. Don't even acknowledge it. If they manipulate you now, they OWN you until they turn 18. Heck, they might even come back in about 30 years and occupy your basement or spare bedroom. Don't let them start this garbage at ANY age.

Incidentally, our oldest two didn't pull those stunts until 3 years. I get to spend most of my days with my youngest, which I LOVE. I don't really care all that much if he gets clingy with me. There's no point in pushing him away unless I HAVE to work or spend time with the others. I make a point of one on one interaction with all my kids, so in the meantime I encourage independence among the other two until time is up. It's upsetting to my youngest who is used to constant contact with me when I do push him away, but he has to learn that Dad cannot be manipulated and Dad will deal with him on Dad's terms. You don't have to be mean about it, but you have to do SOMETHING to get the point across and change those behavioral patterns as soon as they manifest. Else you're in for the child from hell. Sooner or later, someone else has to interact with your child, and you don't want to be the parent that ruins it for everyone else.

I don't have any kids, but I used to babysit a lot when I was younger - I think that sounds pretty normal for that age. I feel for ya! I agree you should set limits with him and try to find fun things for him to do with his dad, for everyone's sake.

If kiddo is ASD then it is probably a matter of him not knowing what to expect from Daddy and knowing TOTALLY what to expect from Mommy so Mommy is safe and Daddy is scary. I don't agree with AngelRho that this 32 month old child is trying to manipulate you. He IS trying to communicate to you, just probably not very effectively right now. I suggest that Daddy needs to meet kiddo on kiddo's level. Just like any ABA therapist would do. A good therapist doesn't come into the home of an autistic kid and expect to be able to insert him or herself completely into that child's comfort zone. Daddy needs to consciously work on first being near kiddo while kiddo plays, then taking a small part in playing with kiddo doing what the child wants him to do not directing the play at all, and just keep stretching it a little at a time. It also might help if Daddy did the SAME thing every time he comes home so your son gets a better sense of that routine and that Daddy is an integral part of it.

There was a time for us when my husband would come home and want a hug from our ASD son and when DS wasn't willing to give a hug at that time it made DH feel bad. I told him to change his approach just a litle bit, he was saying, "Let me give you a hug" while approaching DS. I suggested that he sit down on the floor in the room with DS and ask him if he would come get a hug. This worked. Now my DH spends time each day doing things with DS that our son really enjoys and that makes it possible for DS to do things with Dad that Dad enjoys (at least for a little while )!

Thanks for all the advice! I do think it is a form of separation anxiety but not necessarily manipulation. My son is very, very anxious and I think he feels threatened and apprehensive when his father is around. DS does not have a diagnosis yet and he only has a speech therapist. My husband doesn't believe my son has an ASD but I'm pretty sure he does, probably HFA. It is pretty chaotic when my husband comes home from work - I think we will come up with a routine that is a little more soothing. Also, my husband is pretty abrupt when he tries to play him and does NOT follow his lead at all which is what I always do. I baby him a lot and I think he has become accustomed to being treated that way.

I raised four kids (all NT as far as I know but I really suspect my youngest son to be AS like me) and I was a housewife most of that time. When they are little they just want the person they have with them all the time, namely Mom. Mine would throw fits if I'd leave them with somebody else, like their Dad or my mother but they would have to get over it. I'd just go and do what I had to do and they would eventually chill. If you don't leave them with other people when they are small, even though they throw fits about it, they will have problems with being left at school and at friends houses when they get older and that can cause more problems for them. I would say just do it anyway and after a few times it will be better. Tell your husband to try and distract him with playing or toys, but if he won't be distracted then he might just have to let him cry it out and get over it. That happens sometimes. I've left my kids with people before and they had to cry it out and I've had kids left with me before too that just screamed for their mother for half an hour no matter what I did but then they finally chilled. It can be heart wrenching and you feel like you are abandoning them or some way or other psychologically hurting them, but you aren't. It's really ok to do and probably better for both of you when you do it. If you aren't 100% then you can't be as good a Mom, and you can't be 100% if you don't have some kind of for real chill time for yourself, and not just there at the house when he's sleeping and you know he can wake up at any time.

You can have him sit in a chair in a corner. You can tell him he is free to get off the chair anytime he is ready to play with his father.

I don't think he is being mean, I think he is just very attached. We had a similar situation. If you have to go somewhere, go. It takes awhile b/c kids on the spectrum can have persistence superpowers when it comes to this kind of thing, but he will get used to it. We had similar issues when my son was little and I felt awful leaving, but it worked out. Once he figured out I wasn't going to come right back when he cried, he settled in with just my husband, and things were fine. Sometimes it takes awhile b/c if he is on the spectrum his brain may want him to ruminate over it, instead of just making the best of it.

I know it probably hurts your husband's feelings, right now, but your child will come around. If you push too hard IMO, it will take longer. Eventually your child will figure out he can be clingy with his dad, too. That is what mine did, anyway.

I would not recommend this approach to a 32 month old.

Why?

Experts recommend timeouts for toddlers and say it works with most of them. My son was getting time outs at 18 months and I thought that was too little but I learned it's not when I found out my parents were giving him them and it sure taught him. I knew then kids that young were capable of learning right from wrong. Even when I was two I knew it was wrong to push people because I always got in trouble for it. I was getting time outs at that age too and another punishment was if I can't play nice, we're leaving so we always left and I hated it.

I wouldn't do it, either, b/c you are basically punishing the child for missing his mommy. I don't think not playing with your daddy b/c you miss your mommy is a reason to punish. IMO, The child is not being rude or intentionally hurting his daddy's feelings.

Even in cases where a timeout is considered appropriate for a toddler, the guideline as far as I know was one minute for each year of age. So for a two year old that would be two minutes, not until the toddler does x. I don't even think a toddler would understand a punishment like that.

Who is more capable of growing a thicker skin: a two year old or an adult?

I don't give a damn what "experts" say about kids in general. I know that I would have been really angry if I had been treated that way and it would have caused lasting damage in my relationship with the parent I saw as primarily responsible.

Maybe it's an ASD thing, or maybe it's just my family, but I forget little and forgive a tiny fraction of that. If you want to poison your relationship, go ahead and treat the kid that way. Maybe he'll turn out to be one of the flexible, forgiving kind, and he'll say "thanks for improving my relationship with my dad, mom!" Then again, he may think "I can't trust her either! Who are these people I have to live with? How soon can I get away?"

Everybody's kids are different, but yeah, when we tried timeouts the "punishment way" very early on in our parenting, it was a disaster and all my son did was as Adamantium said, try to get away.

We do use timeouts, but now they work b/c they are the calming timeouts, which is what they I think they were originally designed to be. In practice, that either means taking my son away from the stressful thing and helping him use calming techniques or in cases when that clearly won't work, Mommy gets the timeout so I can give him space and calm myself so that I proceed calmly out of reason and not frustration. Of course at school they used the punishment kind, so I had to start calling mine something else, b/c he started resisting them, again.

I would not say that would work for everyone, but that is what works for us and "might makes right" kind of parenting does not work for my son.

When I was a kid and sent to my room (What they used to call a punishment-style timeout in the old days), all it did was make me more enraged. It was usually followed up with what I perceived to be a humiliating insistence on an apology for something I was likely not sorry for and as a package cemented my feeling of being treated unfairly.

For the child in the original post, he just has to get used to be cared for by either parent. At that age maybe distracting him from Mommy's absence with whatever interests him would probably be the most help. My son used to love ceiling fans at that age, so we used to turn on a ceiling fan so he could distract himself looking at it.

We don't do a formal, structured "timeout" but use timeouts as a means to calm the kid to keep from escalating whatever the bad behavior is at the moment. It happens so rarely now that my oldest son thinks he's in trouble when we put him in time out, because that's how they do things at his school. I explain to my kids, "you're in time out because you're freaking out. You have 5 minutes. I'll come get you in 5 minutes, and if you're feeling better by then, you can come out of your room any time. If you need more time, take all the time you need. Of course, my 4 year old will end up falling asleep and taking a nap! It's probably what she needed in the first place.

5 minutes is a MINIMUM time for all our children. 1 minute for every year of the child's age is a good general rule, but I just don't think 2 minutes is really enough for most 2 year olds.

I don't have a problem with using it as punishment, but time outs as punishment are so rarely needed in our house.

Come to think of it, we really haven't had to do a REAL punishment in a long time... Looks like we're all set for the teen years!! !

We don't use time outs because they didn't really work ( I haven't tried them in awhile). He is a pretty easy going kid and doesn't get into too much trouble and listens very well so we have been fortunate for that so far. Besides, I wouldn't want to punish him for not wanting to play with his father. I just want to help them build a relationship like we have together. I know he loves him so I'm sure there is a reason for why he doesn't want to play with him right now. We've been working on my husband mellowing out and letting our DS lead and it seems to be working. I also haven't been pushing for him to go to his father so that also seems to be working.

On a side note, my mom just came back to live with us and my DS could not be happier! She watched him for the first two years while I worked and they were pretty close but when she left a little over two months ago he didn't even seem to care which made me worry. He was so excited when we picked her up today and he played with her ALL night! We will see how long this lasts