20 Month Old Cries Everytime She Sees My Brother

What first comes to mind is odor. Does he smoke? Does he wear strong cologne? Does he have body odor? This may sound funny, but is his face symetrical? Is his voice loud or deep? Other than that, babies are usually an excellent judge of character. Maybe she just doesn't 'like' him. Her 'first impression' of him was not a good one. Or she may just be going through seperation anxiety around him since you don't see him very often. Maybe since she finally warmed up to him, next time will be better!

My son (he's 10 months old now) had a pretty strong reaction to strangers for awhile. It got to the point that if he hadn't seen my brother for a few days, he would cry when my brother picked him up until he had time to get used to him again.

Hopefully your daughter is just going through a phase that will soon pass. Until it does, I wouldn't force her to interact with her uncle. Give her some time to get used to him and let her actions indicate when she is ready.

How does he treat her. Could he be coming across to her as overbearing or pushy? Does he try too hard to get her to like him? Or is he the opposite, completely ignoring her and then is too loud or aggressive when he does approach her? Look at it from her viewpoint. You know him and are probably seeing him differently than she is.

Has she ever been left alone with him? If so a possibility is that he was inappropriate with her. Not necessarily sexual, either. Perhaps was too serious or too silly.

Do you or others try to talk her into being nice to your brother and this causes her to cry?

I suggest that you not try to put them together at all. When he visits don't ask her to say hi. Have him ignore her,too. Then see what happens.

The adult attitudes could be what is frightening her. Yes, if she cries hysterically, she's frightened.

We have 7 grandchildren, and the next to last beautiful precious little girl would ALWAYS CRY when grandma would come by!! You have no idea how I would feel!! It almost made me not want to visist my kids and grandkids! They live about 7 minutes from us, and we saw them about 2x a week. Whenever I would go and try to pick her up, she would look all round for her mama and then start to cry. Something like this NEVER happened with any of our other grandkids.I wanted to cry too, but never would!
Eventually, within the year she got over it, and now she comes running over to me yelling, "grandma, grandma"!!. My heart just wants to leap with joy when this happens. I have NO IDEA what happened the first year...it could be that being the third child she felt very close to her parents????
Who knows, I am not a psychologist, just a teacher, a mom, and grandmom.
At least everything turned out great! My advice to you, is to let her uncle take a back seat for while, and not go over to the baby and try to play with her, or hold her. Make sure she knows that he is around and having fun with the rest of the family. Hope this works for you. Good luck!!

My youngest son was like this with one of my aunts. As soon as he saw her he'd burst into tears and get very upset. She never did anything except try to get him to like her (so she was EXTRA sweet), but nothing worked. She didn't smoke, wear strong perfume, look funny (in fact, she looks a LOT like my mom, and he's always loved Grandma), nothing we could think of that would make him not like her. FINALLY when he was about 2.5 he just seemed to get over it, one day she was handing out popsicles by the pool and he ran over and got one, said 'thank you' and everything, acting like he'd been cool with her all along. He's 4 now and likes her just fine, so I don't know WHAT to tell you, but mine got over it...after a long while :)

Kids this age have stranger anxiety, especially when they are in their home.

My daughter doesn't get to see my family as often. She would get upset when being left with Nana, for example. Some of it was age and some of it was just unfamiliarity.

I started going through pictures with her before visits. Showing her familiar people (her sister, brother, aunt) and unfamiliar ones (Nana, my uncle, my cousin). That way she "knew" who these people were before she saw them again. It may also help to show her pictures of him with other kids, with you, with someone else she likes. It seemed to really help my daughter. After a holiday visit, I went through the pictures again, to reinforce them. My grandmother was especially delighted that my daughter took to her this time and so was I.

You could also try skype so she "sees" him before he's there in person. I think slow and steady are just the way you/he need to go. She may just need time to warm up to him, for whatever reason.

don't push her, and don't over-react. he could remind her of something she dreamed, or caught a glimpse of on tv....who knows? but your brother is a dad and will surely not be offended by this. let your daughter warm up to him gradually and in her own time. many children go through this sort of phase, and either forcing her to 'be nice' or playing up her fears by special coddling will just make it worse.
khairete
S.