2 1/2 year old girl only wants mommy

[cyclone1272]

Hi,
Since several months my daughter only allows her mom (my wife) do most things, like dressing or bathing her, putting her to bed, putting her into the car seat / taking her out of it - the list goes on. Only when it comes to play time she requests my participation, probably because I'm more fun since my wife is 8 1/2 months pregnant and hence not as mobile.
My wife could definitely use some relief though, but so far has always come to my daughter's "rescue" anyways because she can't stand listening to the ongoing screaming and whining when I'm trying to accomplish above mentioned tasks. My daughter will also kick me and keeps screaming "no, mommy do it!". That makes it completely impossible to i.e. brush her teeth, and using force makes it even worse (my wife has tried to hold her for me to brush her teeth, but that only gets my daughter completely out of her mind).
Interestingly, if my wife is out of town, or if I come home from work before my wife to take her over from the babysitter she is fine with me and lets me do whatever needs to be done. On the other hand, if my wife is about to leave w/o her she will make my day horrible by just screaming, kicking and whining for at least 30 minutes (w/o interruption for even a second). She won't let me touch her and does not hear when I try to talk to her due to her ongoing tantrum. If the question comes up - no, I do not and have never abused her and I am trying to raise her w/o raising my voice.
My wife can't say no in these situations - if my daughter requests for her "to do it" she will jump in no matter how difficult it is for her (especially due to her being pregnant). Although she keeps telling my daughter to let me take care of her as well (I don't think there's much difference in the ways we dress her, put her into the car, etc.), she keeps rejecting me, which keeps nagging on me and lately has put a lot of stress onto our marriage. What is the best way to address this?
Thanks!

[cziggy]

Hi cyclone. Sorry to get your hopes up. I dont have an answer, but but wanted you to know that i am going through the EXACT same thing.
My daughter is almost 3 and this has been getting worse over the past few months. These past two weeks have almost been unbearable, for both of us (wife & myself). On Monday I am going to talk to our nurse practitioner & will let you know if she can shed any light.

[cziggy]

Ok, so here goes. Monday I spoke to a good friend that has an 8 year old son that is a pretty good kid. i mentioned our frustrations and his theory was quite simply. "Who is in control here?". Very good point. Monday night my daughter was acting out so i decided to use the "corner" as a punishment. After about 25 minutes of picking her up and putting her back in the corner because she kept crawling out she finally sat there. Once she calmed down we had "the talk". Tuesday night my wife was home and my daughter was acting out again. In front of mommy I put her in the corner. Mommy ignored her completely and I was in control. She only squirmed for about 5 minutes this time and finally apologized. Wednesday night her doll was in the corner and she was getting a lecture from my daughter about behaving (it was pretty cute)

After a week of telephone tag I connected with our nurse pratitioner. She agreed with everything that I did earlier in the week. She felt that daddy needs to create a sense of control first and mommy needs to advise the child that daddy is in charge & the leave the room. After talking to the nurse my wife really gave me the benefit of the doubt and made sure that I did some of the things that only mommy could do. Kids need structure, this is a lot easier said then done, and they need to know they will get the same treatment from both parents. Oh ya.

I know this seems to go off in a different direction, but it has been a week and I have put my daughter to bed 4 of the 5 nights this week. We also had a great breakfast this morning while mommy slept in. I think I heav learnt that she will always favour mommy , but not to the same extent going forward. i hope this works as good for you as it did for me.

Cheers

[cyclone1272]

Hi cziggy,
I really appreciate your advice - I will try this out. It'll have to change anyways - my wife just gave birth to our second child (a girl again). While she was in hospital my older daughter kept asking for mommy, but when I explained why she wasn't home she had no problems letting me do whatever needed to be done. Today my wife returned from hospital and had her hands full with the new baby. My daughter so far has shown some signs of jealousy, but nothing extreme. And interestingly she decided to go shopping with me - alone. No problems there again. At night my wife asked me to give her a bath and she kept screaming for a while - until she was finally in the water. But when it came to washing her hair - she would only allow my wife to do it. Which is maybe ok - she had some "trauma" from me washing it previously where I didn't pay too much attention to whether water ran down her face or not, whereas mommy is overly careful. But if we're in the pool she doesn't care how much water runs down her face, so what the heck - I'll ask my wife to tell her she doesn't have time to do it next time and see what happens...
Thanks!