The Whole Parent Podcast

What to do with a REALLY clingy kid.... #52

• Jon Fogel - WholeParent

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In this episode, Jon answers three real parent questions about clinginess — those “Velcro moments” when a child won’t let you leave the room and panic replaces logic. Through stories, brain science, and attachment research, he explores why clinginess is not a sign of overdependence, but a child’s way of saying “you are my safe person.”

Parents will walk away with a clearer understanding of what clinginess really communicates, how to respond without reinforcing fear, and practical rituals that build connection, confidence, and emotional resilience.


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If you've ever tried to leave the room and felt a small body instantly attach itself to your leg, or whispered, I'll be right back, only to be met with panic, tears, or a full body cling, you're not alone. Clinginess can be exhausting, frustrating, and honestly even a little scary at times. It's easy to wonder, is this a phase? Is there something wrong? Am I creating too much dependence? In today's episode, we're going to slow down and look at what's actually happening in your child's brain and nervous system during these Velcro moments and what these behaviors might be telling you that goes deeper than what you've just seen on the surface. We're going to talk about why some kids suddenly become extra attached, why they hold it together for other adults, but they always seem to fall apart around you, and how to support them without feeding the panic or losing yourself in the process. Let's get into it. Excited to be out here to record another episode of the podcast. And I got a story to start with today. You know, it's it's part of what we're going through right now in our life. Uh, I have always tried to be there for my kids at night, especially. And I don't think that we have any nighttime separation anxiety talks today. And so I thought I would add one because that's that's the place, honestly, where most kids have the most separation anxiety. And I could have a whole episode just about bedtime and why, neurologically speaking, and evolutionary biology biologically speaking, it's totally normal for kids to be scared at night. In fact, they should be scared at night. It's kind of crazy that we aren't as scared at night as maybe we've conditioned ourselves out of a fear that was probably adaptive for the overwhelming 99% of human history, which is don't be away from your parents at night because the monsters are there. And when I say the monsters, I don't mean the fictional monsters like the ones that hide under your bed. I'm talking about, you know, the actual predators out in the world before humans lived in homes with locks on their doors and and roofs and walls and things like that. But still, even as we're not talking about it in depth tonight, I still, or today, depending on when you're listening to this, I still want to share the story of one of my kids who is currently going through a regression in this way. He is the one who has needed us the least at night of all of my kids. Uh, he has never really been one who needs us all the time. And yesterday he asked me to put a baby monitor back in his room. There hasn't been one in there because him and his brother who live in that room can both open the door and come find us if they need us. And so we haven't had a monitor in that room. We've we have reappro uh re-put it out in the hall because that's actually where we find our kids most often. They come out of that room and then they, you know, if we're downstairs or something before we go up to bed, we want to hear them in the hall. But he asked me to put it back in because he had had a situation where he was calling for us and we weren't coming. And actually, his little brother got up and came and found us and said, Hey, come and get uh big brother. He's he's he needs you, he wants you. And this has come on the tails of him never always just kind of going into his room at night after bedtime routine and in a dark room, just laying down in his bed and falling asleep. He has not needed a song and dance and a ritual like my other kids do. He's always just kind of been the easier one to put to bed. And now he wants these quote check-ins where we come and check on him. And it's not a big deal, it's so easy to do. But it's easy to start to go, oh man, is this gonna be forever? Like what happened? He's almost six years old, he's five and a half years old, and all of a sudden he wants the check-ins. And so I am gonna talk about that with our third question today, why this tends to happen at that five, six age. And if I didn't know what I know, I think I would be kind of more freaked out about this. But um, I know what I know, and so I'm happy to share that with you today. But just if you're in the the place right now where you're like, man, uh my kid is super clingy or whatever, like they never used to be, or they are now, or or maybe you're just coming out of the click the clingy phase where like you it had to be one parent or it had to be the other. Um just know you're not alone, as I said in the intro, right? Like this is a very normal thing, and it's it we are our children's biological imperative for survival, our presence with them. And we'll hit on that a little bit, but uh yeah, just know I'm going through the clinginess thing right now, too, with him. And I'm trying to look at it as a positive. I'm trying to look at it as my opportunity to be that safe, secure attachment for him in this moment. It's not always that way. I'm not always seeing it in those terms, and in that light, I should probably spend more time trying to see it in that light and and put a positive spin on it. But as much as I can, I'm trying to look at this as an opportunity to keep showing up and keep being that touch point and these examples for him that we're gonna keep showing up. And I don't always do well. Sometimes I miss the check-in or I come too late and he's already asleep. And that's kind of beautiful. I don't intend to do that, uh, that he feels so secure that he knows we're coming, that he can fall asleep without us even being there. But uh also I want to make sure that he knows that I'm there. And so, yeah, that's kind of what's going on with me in the world of clinginess today and why I'm doing this episode. But my first one is an Instagram DM from Brit. And Britt says, John, can you talk about what's going on with kids who will just not let go at drop off? My daughter's four. She literally wraps herself around my leg when it's time to go. I keep thinking, shouldn't she be used to this by now? The teachers say that she's fine two minutes later, which somehow makes me feel worse. Why does she melt down only for me? Am I making her too dependent? Brit, this is a really, really common scenario at daycare drop-off or at preschool drop-off, and you are not doing anything to make her too dependent. In fact, she is just at a dependent age, and she is at four years old, where her basic needs for survival depend on you. And this is the presence of mind in the place that I want to start the episode because until we understand why our kids are clingy, we are always going to read this in the wrong way. We a lot of parents read this as my kid just likes being around me, or they just want to be around me, or they just want to get their way, or they don't like doing what I, you know, going to school. They just want to make me late. They just attention seeking. I want to go all the way back and begin again. Place in my book that I would start with this is chapter two. If you if you haven't heard me talk about my book, my book is called Punishment for your parenting. It's a brain-based guide, step-by-step guide to how you can parent more effectively with no power struggles or fewer power struggles. And obviously, uh to raise kids without using punishment. And so chapter one is all about the problems with punishment and how punishment is an ineffective tool for behavior modification or for teaching life skills. But then immediately chapter two is called Get Curious, Not Furious. And really, this is the place where the book starts in earnest. But chapter one is sort of an intro chapter, it's just there to try and get people away from thinking that punishment is going to be the tool that they should use, which is the default tool that most people use with kids in discipline. But I think we have to start in discipline with curiosity, not with punishment. And curiosity says when your kid is doing something, instead of assuming that you know what's going on, or kind of casting them in the worst possible light, often, which is what we all do. I want to say that again. It was what we all do, often because that was what was modeled to us. Our parents often used their their uh assumptions, and it was their worst possible um, I'm forgetting what the the word here is, but their their worst least generous interpretation. There we go. That's what the term I'm looking for. Oftentimes our parents looked at our behavior through the least generous lens possible, and they just kind of said, Well, they're just being this way or that way or the other. What we want to look at kids through is the most generous interpretation. So, what's the most generous interpretation of what's happening with a kid who's melting down or clinging to you or not wanting you to go and crying every single day at drop-off? It's that separation is dangerous for kids until very recently in human history. And so I kind of sort of touched on this uh a second ago when I was telling the story about my son, or kind of giving the example of my son, but understand that for children, and I talk about this in the Curiosity chapter, attachment to a primary caregiver and proximity to that caregiver is as basic of a need as food or water or shelter or air to adults. And the reason that I say this is because unlike an adult, a child has no ability to meet their basic needs or protect their basic sense of security without a secure, attached caregiver. And so when we're dropping off our kids, it is like we are dropping them off and saying, hey, the one thing that you have always known is going to provide for you is not going to be here for the next two, four, six hours. And how would you expect a person to respond if the thing that they literally need for their survival is being taken from them for any period of time, much less the fact that our kids have no sense, no good sense of how long uh time actually takes, right? We've talked about this in the last two episodes, uh, why our kids struggle to process the difference between five minutes and five hours. So imagine as you're dropping your kid off, you think, oh, it's not that big of a deal. I'm gonna be back in two hours or three hours or four hours or whatever. But to them, they're like, no, this spikes their cortisol level. This activates their amygdala, which is their threat sensor, and it says, this is a threat to your survival. And so they of course cling to you and attach to you. And what we know from secure attachment is that secure attachment looks like crying when the caregiver leaves. Now, of course, over time our kids are going to become more adapted to this experience. And if you're hearing the background, my cat just walked in. Not the kittens that I keep in my basement that I rescued. But my actual fully grown cat who's much, much louder than them. Although they're getting pretty loud these days. Um, so I have to pet her, otherwise, she's just gonna keep meowing and bothering us. Um, so our kids go into this like survival mode when we drop them off at daycare or or even with a grandparent sometimes, right? Like anywhere, but especially at daycare. And why they feel totally fine two minutes later. Yep, there she goes again. You hear her that time? Why they feel fine two minutes later is because they are then transitioning or transferring to a secondary attachment figure. So it may be that they have an attachment, a secure attachment, even, to one of their daycare or multiple of their daycare providers, but they also have a hierarchy of attachment. And this isn't something we have a lot of time to talk about in this episode, but understand that the hierarchy of attachment is this thing that has been observed by researchers, attachment researchers, that children have literally a uh like a pyramid of attachment. And there is always or or or a um a depth chart of attachment for those sports fans out there. Uh literally a hierarchy, right? And it's not really a pyramid. That was a bad example. It's it's like a list, and and person number one on the list is is that per primary attachment figure. Then there's number the person number two, then there's person number three into person number four, and down and down and down. And they can be securely attached to all of them, but it will it doesn't mean that they can easily switch from person one to person four or person one to person three, very like like with no reaction. They still cling to person one or person two if they're being handed off to another person. By the way, you didn't hear me say that both parents are in position one. Oftentimes, actually almost always, one of the parents has a more secure attachment, or it's a bad, that's a bad way to say it. They both have equally secure attachments often. Like in the case of me and my wife, we both are securely attached to our kids, all four of our kids. But for the the front three for sure, and starting to be my daughter as well, who is only again 14 months old, the primary attachment figure has always been my wife, which is funny for people to hear because they're like, John, you're a whole parent. Like, you wrote Punish Me for your parenting, you do a parenting podcast every night, you do all of this stuff, you make all these videos. Like, how are you not the primary parents? And it's like, no, no, no, I'm fully securely attached to my kids, but I'm just not in position one. And I don't take that personally, right? I don't think that that makes me a bad parent because I didn't find myself in position one. There are certain biological things that made my wife pre-dis kind of uh predetermined to be a more easily securely attached caregiver than me. But also, I'm just glad that they are so securely attached to my wife that they have her. And guess what? When she's not there, then I become person number one for them. But if it comes to the handoff, when she has to give the kids to me, that handoff is not always pleasant. It's not always clean and easy. Our kids don't automatically shift from attachment figure one to attachment figure two with no struggle. Now, on the flip side, often there will be a situation where I hand off my kids to my wife, and almost never do they say, Oh no, we want dad to stay here, unless I'm like playing a really fun game. They don't. And so, Britt, this is exactly what's happening to your kids. Now, if you are handing your kid off to a uh a family member or something, or your partner, my guess is you wouldn't think twice about it. But because it's in a daycare environment, we often think, oh, this is gonna be really rough. And so I'm I'm not saying I'm totally on the same team as the Derek daycare providers, especially because I know that there are a lot of daycare providers who say they stop crying after two minutes, and what they really mean is they stop crying after 20 minutes or 30 minutes, and nobody takes care of them in that period of time and nobody comforts them and corregulates with them. But if you trust your daycare provider, I believe you. I believe you that you should. And it is just a hierarchy of attachment thing. It's a normal thing for your child to have that secure relationship with you and to respond to that secure relationship by saying, okay, I am going to, you know, lean in and I'm going to co-regulate with my mom first. And if my mom hands me off, then I'm gonna kind of throw a fit for a minute and then I'll figure it out. That's okay. Understand that we praise adults for this, actually. We praise adults for having secure relationships, and yet we blame and shame children for having those same secure relationships when really the only way they have to express that security is through the act of clinging to saying, I don't want you to leave, right? Um, we love you, I love you, I don't want you to leave. But secure relationships for adults are more like, hey, I can let you go to work and stuff, but I love you no matter what, even when you get home. Um, or even while you're away, right? Even when you get home, that would be pretty strange. But uh, I'm I love you even when you're away. We would say, Oh, that's so sweet, that's so wonderful. But when a kid does it, we're like, ooh, a kid needs to learn some independence. And that is, by the way, the real takeaway from this episode is that I don't think that your kid should learn independence. I think that they should learn interdependence, which is that oftentimes they can be independent, they can do independent things. Other times they can be codependent in their borrowing of co-regulation with you, but that it's not a codependency that's perpetual, although there is some aspect to that when they're so little and they can't really do any regulation on their own. I want them to be interdependent. And interdependent means I can be independent and then when I need help, I know I can go and find people. I don't have to white knuckle it and go it alone and figure it out and cry it out and whatever and just self-soothe. I can go and seek out caregivers who will be who will help me feel better. And if your daughter is doing that with a daycare provider, great. If not, then we have to figure out another thing. But I also think there's something we can do before this, and that is we can give a per uh we can create a ritual, essentially, a tradition around the separation that is predictable, and then tell the story of what happens when we come back. And this is going to be, you know, what we're gonna talk about throughout the episode. But I'm gonna start it here by saying the ritual can be very, very simple. It can be three squeezes, right? I love you, or I'm with you, or I'll be back. It can be a little song. You can sing, grown ups, come back. That's a Daniels Higer song for those who are uh listening along, knowing that from the PBS days, heydays. Uh you can say whatever it is as part of that ritual. You can give each other three kisses and do a silly dance. You can whatever that looks like, and then you're gonna say, you're gonna go in there, and then mommy's gonna come back, you know, at the end of the day, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, you're gonna do this, you're gonna play with your friends, you're gonna eat lunch, you're gonna go have nap time, you're gonna do story time. And then when it's all done, mom's going to come back, and I'm gonna give you three squeezes when I get back. Here I am. And that three squeeze one is one that I've used. It doesn't have to be that, I just made it up. Um, but you literally, or I think I made it up, maybe I saw it somewhere. But you know, uh it can be anything that that ritual is, but you just want to create that predictable ritual that capstones the before and then the reconnection. And then the other thing to do here is to take the reconnection seriously, spend a good, you know, three to five minutes really listening to how your kid days kid your kid's day went and listening to what happened to them. Um, you don't have to like grill them or interrogate them about what happened, but really spend some time reconnecting with your kid. That can be really, really important and really, really helpful for them. And the more times they have that experience of that separation and that reconnection, the more that builds the bond. And I want to just say one quick thing here, which is that if it really is only two minutes and and then the she's figuring it out, this is an opportunity for her to build a little bit of emotional distress tolerance. And I know that that's so hard for people to hear, but it is an opportunity to build a little bit of emotional distress tolerance, and that's a good thing, especially if she has that secure care caregiver, and then you're gonna keep showing up and then just be willing to, you know, kind of go with the flow in that. I think that that's gonna really serve you well, and it's gonna help you in this. And I want to get to the next one because I think that we have more to say, but I think that's a good place to start. The next question comes is another Instagram DM. I got lots of Instagram DMs about clinginess from Jamie. And Jamie says, Does clinginess ever mean that something is wrong. Like my son is five and he's super smart and he acts, but sometimes he acts like a toddler if I walk into another room. I hear people say that it's a developmental thing, but it feels kind of behavioral. Like he only does it when he doesn't get his way or when something or when I'm doing something that's not related to him. I don't want to reinforce this. Is there a point at which clingingness becomes a learned behavior? Sorry if this sounds harsher than I mean it to be. I'm just confused. That's a great question, Jamie. I want to highlight everything that I just said and then I want to kind of go a little bit deeper here and talk about some Stephen Porgis stuff because I think this is a helpful place that we can go. So Stephen Porgis for those who don't know uh used to be at UIC he came up when he was at UIC with the polyvagal theory of emotional emotions and and regulation and the polyvagal theory is basically that we have these different states that we're in and he identifies them as colors. And one of the things that he suggested in the the case this the context of polyvagal theory was that a lot of our children's reactions to us are non based on our nonverbal cues. And I just want to kind of say here that what I'm hearing from you and I mean this in the most non-judgmental way possible because I do the exact same thing that you do what I'm hearing here is that you have already kind of made up your mind that this is some sort of bid for your attention it's a learned behavior they don't really need it and you're kind of they're he's kind of doing it to get to you in some way. He's doing it he's trying to give you a hard time and what what what I would argue first for my book is that kids have no vested interest in giving their parents hard time with this type of stuff. It's always that they are having a hard time and that they're showing their hard time to us because we are their secure established attachment figures. So it's normal because we are the secure attachment person that we get kind of the worst of our kids. And this is one of the examples of that. And so when our kids see those cues from us that we're upset with them because they start to do these kind of maladaptive or annoying behaviors like acting like a toddler which by the way listen to the next answer too because it's kind of goes right with this because five year olds do this for a lot of reasons but one of them is because five year olds just because of the way the society is set up and things kindergarten and just age developmental you know status going going through brain development going through social development going through physical development as that stuff happens there is often a regression that occurs that is you know in line with that five six even sometimes four depending on the the whether the birth order and and maturity of the kid that occurs. So it could be that you have you're seeing a little bit of a regression which I'll talk about in the next answer. And then in the midst of the regression you're reacting to it nonverbally so you know face voice body posture and then it immediately those cues drop your kid into what Stephen Porgis calls polyvigal red, what we call fight or flight, right? Survival mode, which we talk about all the time it activates their amygdala the sympathetic nervous system million ways to say the same thing. And so we see these kind of like my kid is clinging to me they're like a velcro stuck to me at all times as a power struggle when in reality this is just from from a nervous system perspective this is just evidence that they are needing of co-regulation in that moment. It's a bid for co-regulation and we are in the words now I'm going to go into a different attachment researcher Porjus wasn't really attachment. I guess he kind of was but a different attachment researcher and uh relationship researcher Gottman talks about bid for bids for attention they're kind of making a bid for our attention and then we kind of stonewall or we block that bid by saying ah come on I don't like the way that you're making that bid. I don't like that behavior. And so that then sends them deeper into the dysregulation and they become even more clingy because now they're trying to cling to us. They're be kind of they're becoming sort of ambivalent to us and they're trying to cling to us because now we're kind of pushing them away because we don't like the way that they're doing that. And that becomes this kind of vicious cycle. And I want to say Jamie if this came from your parenting that your upbringing if they kind of did that to you I would not be surprised at all. I I also know that we can have a better way to respond. And this is the place where I would plug doing some sort of grinding exercise with your child in those moments when you're leaving so that or or when you when they're just clinging to you from room to room okay it's not a deep issue we're going to get through this let's find five things different colors let's find a red thing a blue thing a green thing whatever do a grinding exercise and or take some belly breaths like whatever it is calm down their nervous system and why Stephen Porter just calls it the polyvagal theory is because it's all around the vagus nerve and vagal stimulation. Take and that's why I say belly breaths right so you take three deep belly breaths that activates the vagus nerve that helps to calm them down and then they move from polyvagal red back into polyvagal green which is where they're more regulated. And so what I'm reading in this question reading between the lines is that what's happening is your kid is exhibiting some unwanted behaviors with respect to clinginess. And you're reacting to those behaviors even if you're not reacting openly, right? You said hey I'm sorry if this sounds harsh if it's sounding harsh coming out of you, first of all, good on you for just naming it and saying it harshly I'd much prefer people to be honest with me than to you know hide and obfuscate and then we're answering the question that isn't really the question, right? We're answering a fake question because they want to maintain appearances. I'd rather you say it the harsh way because then I can think about whether or not maybe that exact harshness that you're kind of identifying in yourself as you read it on the page before you hit send an Instagram that exact harshness is also reflecting back to you is reflecting to your child rather when you're feeling kind of like ah come on. And so that's what I would offer to you. And I know it's not the longest answer ever but I think that this next answer is also going to kind of feed into this because it's another five year old and in this case it is a kid who has who the the commenter Alison who sent this as an email has clearly identified had did not always act like this. And so it's one of these clear regression ones. We see this all the time and it's something I don't get to talk about a lot so I want to talk about that. And I think that the both the one before but also this one after is going to also speak to yours. So let me get into that one. I have time for one more I'm going to try and do this one in not super super long. I know I get real long-winded on these podcasts and you look at the number of how long each podcast episode is going to be and you're like oh my gosh this is longer than an episode of Game of Thrones. Am I really going to do this right now and listen to this guy? I was just trying to go to the grocery store and come home. I didn't need like an hour of uh meandering about clinginess. Okay, let me try and do this in like 10 minutes. So Allison says John I'm hoping that you can help me make sense of this because I feel like I must be doing something wrong. My five year old is glued to me 247 lately. Like I can't even go to the bathroom without his little fingers under the door. It's super triggering to me. It makes me feel claustrophobic. I just want a moment to breathe and it used to be and she used to be miss independent. So I don't get why she suddenly needs to be on me all the time. Nothing big happened I don't think except for my husband's been traveling more which just means I get no breaks from this I keep wondering if I coddled her too much or if she's going through something that I can't see. Anyway I just don't know what to do. Okay. So you said nothing big happened but when I see five year old the first thing that I think is there is big things happening even if this child is not yet in school when they around five years old the reason why we have standardized schooling formal education begin in kindergarten at five years old is because kids go through this developmental separation at five and six where they really come into their own from an autonomy standpoint. And that is very very shocking to the nervous system of a kid. And so as we think about development we start with these little babies like my baby Marg and she's 14 months old and for her she doesn't even or not even 14 months old she doesn't even know that where that her brain and my brain are not thinking the same thing at all times. So it's what's called theory of mind. She literally thinks that me and her mom are just kind of extensions of her consciousness. And so she cannot have a perspective that is different from ours because she doesn't even understand that other people have she doesn't understand that what she thinks is perspective at all. She thinks what she thinks is just what everyone must be thinking. Now push forward to my next kid he's Liam he's going to be four soon he has developed in some semblance by three a piece of theory of mind which is other people think the different things than I think. And other people have different opinions than me. Other people can like different colors than me. Now he might not be comfortable with that yet where other people have different music tastes and they want to listen to them in the car and it's not his turn to play the Vivo soundtrack for the 15th time today. Somebody else wants to listen to Frosty the snowman and he wants to listen to vivo but now we're in conflict right so he's not at the point where he can have empathy but he is in the point at the point where he can perspective take in other words but he is at the point where he can understand that other people have different wants and desires then we push forward to my five year old Ollie my five year old Ollie now understands that he can have different wants and desires as somebody else and that he can go about having his own role in the world that is independent from his parents he can have his own wants and desires he can go to the bathroom by himself he can get water by himself when he needs as long as I leave the cups in a place where he can get to them he pulls open the snack drawer he gets what he wants he tells me what he doesn't want to eat when he does want to eat can have all of these perspectives and he really can himself have a measure of autonomy that up until this point he has not been able to have. Now you couple that with the fact that Oli's in kindergarten that he's going to school and you see that actually we in our society mark this developmental milestone by saying yes and you get to go and begin your individualized education now. And so it's not surprising that we start school at this age other countries don't not some most other countries do, but some other countries have identified this is developmental milestone needs a little bit more cooking time and countries in Scandinavia for example will start more formalized education although they have universal pre-K, but they'll start more formalized education closer to seven when kids have a more robust cognitive structure and that's a big issue that I have with the school system we do too much cognition and cognitive training at five and six when we should just be doing social emotional training and getting kids to understand this new autonomy and freedom that they're experiencing. Instead, as soon as they experience autonomy we trap them and say no now you have to learn exactly what I say which is is is problematic in its own right. But the thing that happens with respect to clinginess that is important even if your kid is not in full-time school is that as the they feel themselves pushing away from you and and developing a sense of identity outside of you sometimes they panic. And this happens to I don't know what the percentage is 10, 20, 30% of kids I don't know. But I'll tell you I have the fix for it. I have the ultimate fix for it and I'm going to tell you that in about a minute and a half maybe three minutes max. But when they feel that push away what they do is they panic and they panic in one of two ways typically either one they push harder and they push really hard they say I don't like you anymore I hate you go away from you you're stupid you're dumb I hate you I don't want you all this stuff and in that case they're testing you they're testing you are you going to keep coming back if I abuse you verbally if I tell you I hate you if I tell you I don't need you anymore are you still going to be there because that's how I want to test that theory. Now some kids will go through that with one parent and the other parent they'll do the other one. And the other one is exactly what you've just described. They regress to the baby stuff this kind of goes with Jamie's thing where my five year old acts like a toddler sometimes they'll literally stop being able to do things that they could do you know a week ago they could tie their shoes now they say they can't. A week ago they could have speak in full sentences and now they say me no like that. They start to do they they they need you to feed them again sometimes they go through they they sometimes will have a potty regression where all of a sudden they're peeing in their pants all the time and I need to wear diapers again and they haven't worn diapers in two years. They do all of this stuff because they're essentially feeling like I don't I'm not a baby anymore. I can feel that but I'm not sure if I stop acting if I start acting like a grown up if my parents will just abandon me and stop caring for me. Because deep inside their their nervous system and inside their evolutionary biology they know what we said at the beginning of the episode which is that they need us to survive. But they can feel themselves pulling away and that scares the bejesus out of them. And so like I said some kids with one parent maybe the husband who's traveling maybe your husband Allison who's traveling it's I hate daddy I don't want like daddy only mommy I hate I hate daddy. And then with you it's I I I can't even go to sleep on my own. You can't you have to hold me all the time you have to hug me don't you love me anymore? And it's kind of these two attachment wounds the avoidant attachment wound and the ambivalent attachment and what they're playing out is what do I need to do to get my fundamental needs met so I said I was going to get to you in three minutes here it is three minutes. The the the solution to this problem is to literally look at your kid eye to eye and say there's nothing you can ever do that will make me love you any less. Mommy's not going anywhere is whatever you need me to do I'll be here no matter what. You don't have to test me you don't have to hang on me. I'm always going to be here for you no matter what. Even when you're old and great I'll still be here for you. And I know that that sounds silly and that sounds like a Hallmark card or something or the end of a bad Christmas movie. But really these regressions are children checking to see the strength of the bond that they've been forging for five years and they need and they seek for that reassurance and connection that it'll still hold in the period of clinginess, in this period of change, in the period of rejection of you. And what's the craziest part of this all of this is is that you say that four times in the next month and the clinginess might just evaporate. And I'm not saying that it will because there are many reasons why kids cling there are many other things that could be going on but I'm saying that if it is the one where they are testing the bond, I have had tremendous success with parents. It's especially true when they're doing the I hate you thing you just say to a kid who says I hate you there's nothing you can ever do that'll make me love you any less. And I swear to you within a week it ends if you say it every two days or a couple times a day every every couple days. So you can say you know you can come sit with me while I finish this your body is safe even when I'm not near you I will always come back for you no matter what. And that is the stuff that you can say over and over and over and I know it seems like your kids should know that they're five years old. You've been saying this to them for five years. But right now they need to hear it again because they are going through something. So even though you say I don't know that there's been a big change here. They they are feeling the change and sometimes the change is invisible like you said or or that's maybe it's uh I don't know if you said that or the person before you said that the change is invisible. But yeah yeah it's she's going through something I can't see the change is invisible sometimes. But the more you lean in and you just say hey sometimes clinginess is fixed by by letting it happen and naming the clinginess and saying I see you needing me extra. Don't worry I'm not going anywhere. And that can be the ultimate thing because I get it if it does feel claustrophobic. You should take some time off you should you know take those you know if you need the the day off or whatever doing whatever um whatever you need to do to make sure that you're safe and and and well regulated and eating and sleeping do that stuff especially if your husband's traveling more but what she needs right now is just to hear that you're there. That's what I have for you this in this episode of the whole parent podcast. I hope that you if you have a clingy kid out there or maybe you're about to go through a clinginess phase that this will give you some tips and tricks and some insight into how to manage that as always you can go to the links at the bottom to get access to all of my free resources and my paid resources things like my book which I referenced a couple times today Punishment Free Parenting the Brain Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice, go grab that. As always I would love for you to subscribe on Substack but I'll hit all that in the outro. Until next time bye for now thank you again for listening to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast. If you are listening to this right now yes you in your car driving somewhere on a walk with your kids perhaps your kids are melting down and you're listening to this on your headphones uh with the noise cancellation turned on whatever you're doing while you're listening doing the dishes at night after your kids go to bed I don't know that would just be me if I was listening. Stop right now. I have three quick favors to ask you. I promise they're not going to take you very long. The first one very very easy go in to wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate it five stars. That's one, two, three, four, five stars. The more five star reviews that our podcast gets as we accumulate episodes, the more likely it is to be pushed out to more parents who are searching for parenting podcasts to solve their problems. Whatever you got out of this episode whether it was something that to try with your kids whether it was a new way to think about parenting maybe this episode was not specifically about a problem that you're having but you're somebody in your life who's having this problem go in and rate it five stars. And if you have an additional 30 seconds that first one only takes you 10 seconds if you have an additional 30 seconds just type a few words for me to read. I'd love to read I'd love to read the reviews if there's something specific that's helped you write it out. It helps me to know what we should keep doing here on the podcast week in and week out. The second question that I have for you or request that I have for you favor, let's call it is to share this episode with somebody in your life who you think could use it. It might be a parent, another parent in your kid's class it might be a sibling who has young kids maybe it's your kid's teacher or a faith leader in your life whomever it is that you think should have this episode of the podcast or any episode of the podcast send it directly to them. I know it's vulnerable to share podcasts with people who you might not have that close of a relationship with or even more vulnerable if you do have a close relationship with them. But I promise you, so many of the people who listen to this podcast listened not because they followed me on social media, but because they got a personal recommendation from somebody in their life who said, Hey, this guy has a way of talking about parenting that just works for me. You don't know if they listen to it or not, they might never reply, but maybe, just maybe, they'll love the episode so much that they become your new parenting partner out there in the world, doing things the same way that you are, and you might have just made your new parenting bestie. The last thing that you can do is definitely the biggest ask for me, but it is to go over to Substack. That link is down below in the bio, and to subscribe so that these episodes can keep coming to you. Paid subscriptions on Substack is the only way currently that I am being funded here on the Whole Parent Podcast. That is the only money that I receive. It is$5 a month. I think that this podcast is worth the price of a coffee for you. If it's not worth the price of a coffee for you, obviously don't do it. But if you're extra cheap like me, you can just subscribe annually. I know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year. If you know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year, just give me 50 bucks up front, and then you don't have to think about it coming out of your credit card every single month. Those are the ways that you can support me. And as always, I think that you're a great parent already. But I do hope this episode gave you something to make you a little bit better. Take care.

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Jon Fogel

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