Does Your Child Have Stranger Anxiety?

Does your child have stranger anxiety?

Amber - posted on 01/25/2009 ( 1 mom has responded )

Our 11 month old daughter has a high level of stranger anxiety, especially with males. She has gone to child care and we take her out all the time. The doctor says that this is normal. It makes it really hard sometiimes though. She won't even go to her grandpa that she sees every week. Is anyone else experiencing this?

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Kaleigh - posted on 01/25/2009

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yeah my son started the separation anxiety thing out of the blue and it was really intense for a while there but this last week has been not so bad hes starting to calm down a bit, it is normal and it is difficult, i actually got a lot of advice on here for ways to deal with it but it didnt really make too much of a difference what i did (special toy/blanket etc.) , just be reassuring and follow her cues. with aiden his big thing is if someone walks in the door so when someone does i just pick him up and we investigate who it is together otherwise he gets confused and upset and cries going back and forth between crawling towards who it is and then crawling away. he never had a problem with my mom and then he did literally all of a sudden so instead of just picking him up like always she started just crouching and talking to him from where she was letting him know "its grandma" and letting him crawl over to her if he wanted or if he didnt id pick him up and we would go over to her together. i think the key thing is showing them that if they are uncomfortable(Aiden gets really squirmy) that mommy(or daddy or whoever) is still there and that the situation is in their control, i think thats why both of us going over to the "stranger" instead of them just coming over helps. best of luck and just keep reminding yourself "this too shall pass" :)