Why is my 18 month old baby crying and closing her eyes every time I take her to public places?

Question

For the past 2 months my daughter has become less social. It all started when I signed up at the gym and started leaving her in the daycare at the gym. I obviously went in with her and stayed with her for a while to make her feel comfortable. The first day she lasted the whole hour. The second day she lasted about 1/2 hour. The third day 15 minutes and then the 4th day she only lasted about 10 min before they were calling me to go and pick her up because she wouldn't stop crying. On the 3rd day she started to close her eyes and would just cry. They thought she was sleeping. I know my daughter and know she was not sleepy. Sure enough now every single time we are in a public place and someone tries to talk to her she starts screaming and closes her eyes for about 15 minutes. It's been a few weeks already and I still can't workout at the gym and now anywhere I go she closes her eyes and cries if someone tries to talk to her. Why is she doing this and what can I do to change it?? Help first time mom!

Answer 1

My son used to do this all the time. I would leave him at a sitters to run errands and after 10 minutes, I'd get a phone call to pick him up. What we did is we found a little device that lets you record your voice. I'd give it to the sitter and have her play it for him. I recorded this " Hi Zach! Be a good boy today while Mommy's gone. I love you and I will see you soon!" This worked really well for us. I also would give him a toy everyday to take and play with. This worked well for us. If you need anymore help, feel free to email me through my profile.

Hope I helped!!

Answer 2

That sounds like separation anxiety.  She is probably positive that you will be around if she is at home, but is now very afraid that you will "disappear" if you are out in public or that this stranger will take her away from you.  At that age, she doesn't understand that you are coming back.  Time has no relevance to her.  Remember being a kid and school seemed to last forever?  Babies have even a less sense of time.  That one hour may have seemed like an eternity to her.  

Although I know that the experts disagree with me, I think that for her sense of security it would be best to take her out for short trips, try to avoid people and not leave her alone at any time.  Once her sense of security is re-established, I would start doing very, very short babysitting stops - starting at 10 to 15 minutes.  Our children grow in their trust of us.  I think that she needs to learn "Mommy will always come back for me."  Right now, she's just not sure if you will ever come back if you leave.

Answer 3

Hi,

I think the most important thing to start with is to get your baby into a good sleep routine.  I had massive problems with getting my 4 month old son to sleep.  He would just lie awake and cry for hours, then when he finally went to sleep he would wake every hour or two hours through the night and cry again!  Talk about pulling our hair out .... we were absolutely desperate for sleep!

It was a baby sleep audio program recommended by a friend that finally saved us. We followed the advice and began by creating a baby sleep routine which included bathtime, dimming of the lights, putting James into his crib, final nappy change and then lullabies. We also made recommended changes to his naps during the day and used some of the other recommended techniques. Within two weeks he was sleeping through the night most nights with just the odd night where he would just wake once!

Definitely start by creating a good baby sleep routine though and you could find that solves most of your baby sleep problems.

Good luck!

If you want to take a look, the audio program is at http://www.babysleepsolution.com