2.5 Year Old Is Breast Obsessed

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IMO you need to get him to respect that your body is not his to do with what he pleases. Forcibly if necessary. Tell him firmly to stop. Remove him form your body, repeat until he gets it. If he thinks this behavior is OK with you then he will grow up thinking that he can treat all women this way.

My son breastfed for over two years. He's almost 4.5 years old now and still wants to see "the tops"--nipples. He thinks they're funny. I DON'T! I sometimes get dressed in the closet to avoid him.

He's a BIG snuggler and would rather crawl into my skin if he could. He's better now that he goes to school and burns off energy and has new interests other than ME!

It does get better and someday you'll miss that "attention."

Just teach him to be gentle as much as you can. And you can start doing the "my body" safety stuff too.

He will get over it, but of course, as a male, he'll never REALLY get over the booby attraction LOL!

I stopped breastfeeding my second daughter at 18 months of age. Once in a while she would actually ask me if she could touch them and I would ask her why. She would just say she wanted to hug me and that was all. I would let her of course and she would just place her hand "there". It was so sweet and I think she just missed those moments. Maybe that is what your son is going through. She is 5 now and doesn't do that anymore. She will give me hugs of course but doesn't touch them. So maybe he's trying to deal with something. If I were you, I wouldn't let him get out of hand though. Tell him he is a big boy and cannot grab or yank or push or pull anything because it does hurt and if he can't listen, time out. Well good luck.

My DD has a thing with bellies. She will try to sneakily put her hand under my shirt to find my belly. I asked her why and she says it's soft and she likes it. I've told her I'm glad she likes it, but it's a part of me and to lift someone else's shirt is rude and she shouldn't do it. Some days have been so bad (public shirt lifting) that she's had to go in time out over it.

I think that if they are now off limits, they are now off limits and he needs to respect your space. If my DD is sitting on me and starts messing with my shirt, I tell her that she needs to stop or the story is over/she has to go do something else.

In your case, snuggle time is OK if it's snuggling, but not if it's a wrestling match. I find it helpful to end the snuggling if it's too much. Maybe even equate it to being gentle with the cat or dog. They don't like it when the child is too rough, and neither do you.

My friend's son weaned early and somewhere around 3 decided that honking breasts was a good idea. His parents were mortified when he did that to ME (not that I was thrilled, either). He got over it and I'm sure your son will, too. I don't think it's a nursed child thing. I think it's a kid thing.

Think about it... when you comfort someone don't you place their head on or around your chest? Doesn't your husband and children usually love placing their head onyour chest?

Breasts smell good, they give people comfort, they nourish a child - that is their main purpose. He must be having some sort of developmental jump or maybe stressful situations (sleeping alone is stressful for most children and many adults) in which he NEEDS the special comfort only a Mother's breast can offer. He's not boob obsessed or he'd be climbing onto every woman and pawing all women's clothing to get to their breasts. He's trying to place his head on YOUR breasts, his Mother's who nursed him (and probably stopped before he was ready to wean, from the sounds of his current behavior).

The more you try to fight him off for needing a very basic human desire for comfort... the more wild and aggressive he will be about getting what he's trying to tell you he needs from his Mother.

While I think what the other posters are saying--that it's a trend/the age/it's "that stage," if it continues or starts getting even worse, then I would look into and do some reading on Aspenberger's Syndrome.

I have a friend whose son has it. Basically, those with Aspenberger's become fixated on a specific thing or things, and it is something they fixate on to no end. For a while with my friend's son, it was heavy equipment trucks (about your son's age). Then it was money. For most of his life, it's been LEGOS (he's 18/19 years old now and probably owns every LEGO building set there ever was. Now he's interested in making movies/working with filming. This summer, he was going to build and shoot a still-frame movie using LEGOS.)

Not saying your son has this or any other type of Autism issue--it could very well be just an extreme measure of trying to find comfort and security, as some Moms have suggested--but if he's actually hurting you... Well, you have to decide when you've had enough, and at what point it is excessive and out of control.

It could also be that your son really, really craves a feeling of complete and total comfort. Could you roll him up in a blanket (with his head out of the top, of course) when he feels like he needs to bury himself in you? How about giving him strong, hard, all encompassing bear hugs? (you sit behind him, he sits in front of you, and you hug him with his arms against his sides and pull him back into your embrace. You give him a strong, hard hug, up until the point where your son says that's hard enough.)

My daughter needed that type of security/type of safety blanket for about a year or two, right about the age of your son. You could maybe redirect him by offering him a bear hug instead of a boob crush/safety blanket. Being a boy, he'd probably think a bear hug is a very neat thing, especially since not very many children get bear hugs. <g>

They don't see them as boobs, they see them as comforters, such as a security blanket. The smell, the feel, they remind them of comfort and love. I agree with standing up when he gets rough and reminding him of being gentle but please don't read something negitive in it, instead ask what is going on that he is looking for this comfort more now, was there a big change in his life lately?

Yeah, I think you have a normal boy. I say that because I too have a boob obsessed boy. He breastfeed until 12 month, his twin brother until two. I wondered if it was because his brother bf longer that he became so obsessed with them. We are long past his wanting to "try to nurse" again (a short phase.) Now it's just running for a look when I'm changing or asking to see them (which I don't let him but try to use humor to distract him/ change the subject.) He'll even put stuff animals up his shirt to say he has boobies or sometime sa baby. I think for him it's about learning the differences between us/women/men(boobs or no boobs). We he asks to see mine I ask to see his and this usually results in a lot of tickling and most importantly, physical contact and one-on-one attention. Boys are physical. This kid in particular responds to touch/wrestling/rough housing, etc. I think the best thing you can do is try to approach it with humor, lots of hugs, lots of reminders to him that he needs to be respectful and gentle. I don't think any of it is bad, it just is. Good luck!