It’s expected that your toddler will have periods of very intense separation anxiety, whether it’s school drop-off, falling asleep at night, or simply letting you use the bathroom alone. Just know that there are clear, developmental reasons he’s missing you, and while his emotions and neediness are exhausting, there are definite, clear things you can do to help him—and yourself—get through this hard time.
Here’s the classic example
Your child is 1 ½ years old, has been walking for the last six months and can now really get around. You’re making dinner and he’s been happily playing on the floor nearby when he stands and wanders out of the room. You hear him padding down the hall to the gated steps. Then suddenly the pitter-patter of feet and he’s standing under you, arms stretched upwards, hands milking the air as he cries, “Ubbbba, ubbbba, ubbba.” [Translation: “Pick me up, oh my God, pick me up now!”]
You’re in the middle of beating egg whites, but you stop and lift him up—he’s not so light anymore!—and he clings to you as if something horrible has happened. After a minute, you start to put him down, but he panics, gripping onto you. You need to make dinner, he’s feeling too heavy, and how can he be so desperate? What happened to your chilled-out, contented kid? Why this sudden panic to be picked up and held like a baby again?
This is separation anxiety, and it’s happening at this moment for a good reason.
The good reason separation anxiety happens in toddlers when it does
Separation anxiety usually spikes when a child is 1 ½ years old, and this is not just a random time. This is a period when kids typically have gotten good at walking. Which means your child can now walk away from you.
Suddenly his world has exploded in size. Suddenly there are hallways to explore and doorways to walk through. It’s all so exciting and wonderfully new, and the 1 ½-year-old wants to check it all out.
He walks away from you, full of confidence and courage. A moment later, he’s running back, arms lifting, a glorious mess.
Parents can become resentful feeling they have to pick up their child so often at this age. It can feel like they are indulging and enabling this neediness. But the neediness is real and it stems from the child’s physical development.
He wants to explore, but so many places he goes doesn’t have you in it. And that’s a major problem. Without you, the world is still too new, too unknown, too intimidating and scary! He feels too small compared to everything else, and he needs your reassurance.
Reassurance comes in the form of reconnecting with you, a so-called “filling up” on you, his secure base, so that he can venture back into the world for a little while longer before needing another refill. The more secure he feels with you—that he can be quickly reconnected to you—the more willing and able he’ll be to explore. Which is what you both want.
Your child’s need to be comforted isn’t manipulative or devious or weak. It’s natural and an expected result of his developmental progress.
Bedtime: where it’s all put to the test—for both of you
Bedtime will trigger your toddler’s separation anxiety because sleep physically and psychically separates her from you. There’s no way around it: sleep means being alone with your brain and body shut down. There’s no real solution to this—other than your child’s staying awake as you become more and more desperate for her lie down, shut her eyes, and let you have some time for yourself.
Unlike making dinner which can be put on hold for a few minutes, bedtime rightfully makes parents crazy if it gets delayed. In the few remaining hours, you need and deserve your own time to recover from the day, and that means getting the f*** away from your child, no offense, of course!
In the desperation of you and your child’s competing needs at bedtime, some unintended and harmful narratives can form in your child. (Narratives are the backbone of how children develop lifelong beliefs about themselves, others and the world; narratives are one of the most important things parents need to know about when raising healthy children.)
For example, because your child might naturally misperceive your need for me-time as a rejection, she may form the narrative that she’s not wanted or not good enough, or that she should be ashamed of her neediness.
If you see these reactions forming in your child, there’s plenty you can do to keep these negative narratives from taking hold (see various posts about naming or voicing your child’s feelings).
But for now, take a breath and know that your child isn’t trying to make you crazy or control you. She’s simply scared to be alone, and there are ways to help her with these feelings.
How to help your child manage separation anxiety
Whether you’re trying to get your toddler to bed or trying to put her down so you can finish making dinner, the solution is still the same: you need to speak to your child’s emotions. After all, separation anxiety is an emotional issue, and the way you deal with emotions is to talk about them, and here’s how:
1 Validate that it’s okay to miss you
2 Voice her feelings (i.e. her fear, loneliness, etc.)
3 Reassure her that you always come back
4 Reconnect to “refill” her
Let’s look at each of these points in more detail.
Step 1: Validating that it’s okay to miss you. Let her know that you understand her feelings.
“I get it,” you might say, “And it’s okay to miss me. It’s okay to have big feelings, and I know that you’ll be all right even though you don’t like the feeling.”
By validating her feelings, you’re doing two things simultaneously: a) you’re telling her that these feelings are normal, manageable, and acceptable and b) you’re strengthening the connection with her by letting her know you understand what’s going on deep inside her.
Step 2: Voicing her feelings simply takes the previous step a little further by labelling the feelings for her. In doing so, you’re not only building her emotional intelligence, you’re helping her manage her feelings by bringing them into the open where she can process them.
It might sound like this: “When we say goodnight, I know you’re sad inside because you and I won’t be together. I wonder if you’re afraid I’ll be gone too long, or that you won’t be okay without me.”
As you voice her feelings, you’ll want to quickly follow this with Step 3: Reassuring her with something like:
“But I always come back. You’re never without me for long. And the feelings you have might feel pretty big, but I know they’re not bigger than you are.”
Step 4: Reconnecting to refill needs some explanation: parents wonder how they’re supposed to reconnect as they’re about to separate, say, at bedtime or school drop-off.
Reconnecting can happen in many forms. It happens when you put aside making dinner to pick up your child. And it happens at bedtime when you give your child the special bedtime kiss—the one that goes forehead, chin, left cheek, right cheek, nose, forehead. You’re connecting to emotionally fill up your child so she has enough of you psychically stored up to last through the separation.
And here you can invent your own way—or better yet, let her invent it—that you can psychically fill up her storage tanks, whether it’s with bear hugs, or kisses, or squeezing of her arms and legs, or back rubs, or head scratching, or hair brushing, and so on.
What you’re really telling her is that the strength of your connection will carry her through the separation.
In the end, what you’re teaching your child is actually quite subtle and complex. You’re helping her create a lasting presence of you in her mind which will psychically connect her to you in your absence. In another words, you may be out of sight, but you’re not out of mind.
This is an important part of a child’s development, and I discuss ways parents can further foster this development in the post, “Bedtime: The Things No One is Mentioning.”)
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