My 3 Year Old Does Want Me....

It's normal for kids to separate themselves from their parents. My daughter was 2 when she first told me that she didn't love me, and she did it in a very calm and collective manner. My daughter is also very close to my mom, much to my displeasure. She has said in the past that she likes my mom better than me. It's somewhat infuriating.

The whole thing is a difficult matter to handle. Of course she is going to like her grandparents better. By nature grandparents have less rules, they tend not to get mad at the kids, and in general your kids can do pretty much whatever they want while they are there.

I had to tackle my problem 2 ways. The first was that my mom had to enforce our rules while watching our daughter. I told her that if she couldn't do that then we would have to look for other options in child care (it was a bluff, but it did work). This included not getting involved when we were having an issue with our daughter. So if she tried to run to my mom to get out of trouble, my mom had to scoot her away and tell her that she needed to work it out with us. In cases like you daughter not wanting to talk to you on the phone, my mom would tell her that it's not ok to treat us that way and she wouldn't allow it in her house. On that end things were solved pretty quickly.

The second way I had to change things was with myself. Your MIL doesn't have to worry about taking care of your daughter and getting the every day tasks done. She has the time after your daughter leaves for that. This means that most of their day is most likely fun time. You don't have that luxury. Even though my daughter and I did have our fun time, I had to step it up. Make things more special since it was limited. This also helped. I'd put something off that was not absolutely essential for me to finish and I'd spend that time with her.

The biggest thing I had to tackle with my daughter is that it's ok for her to have preferences to other people other than my husband and I, that's part of becoming independent and growing up, but it's not ok to be disrespectful to us. Good luck.

I don't have any advice, as I'm with you on this one. My daughter just turned 3 & has become a total daddy's girl & won't listen to anything I have to say. Daddy has to repeat everything I tell her or tell her to listen to me. My MIL's mother died in December, so she hasn't been as active in my daughter's life as of late, but I'm sure she'd be the same with her. I also have a friend that went through this with her son a few months ago (he just turned 4), so this has to be a phase (hopefully not a long one!) But you're not being a baby! It IS hard - letting them test their boundries & independence! Nana will have to get on board & not make matters worse! Hopefully you'll get some good advice. I'll be back checking. Good Luck!

It sounds to me you need to spend sometime with your daughter. She makes up stories so she doesn't have to spend time with you. She is used to you leaving her with her nana, and trusts her. Not you because you leave her. She is young and needs a mother more so than ever. You need to put as much effort as you do with your eldest with your youngest. Yes, it may take a while but you have to start somewhere. Start out by going somewhere with you and her nana for a while. Then go to a park or somwhere she is comfortable with and make it just the two of you. She needs to be able to trust you again. If you don't she will never trust you, therefor you will never have a relationship with your daughter.

My 4 yr old daughter is just about the same way. When my mom comes around she can throw the biggest temper tantrum! She says that I'm mean, that I scare her, and just things like that! Its not true that I am like this to her, and the only time she ever says these things is when my mom is around. What I learned to do, since my mom totally takes her side and I become the 'bad guy', is let my daughter throw her fits and ask my mom to take care of it since m so bad. My mom deals with it for a while, but when she gets tired of it herself she asks me for tips! I then get to explain my daughters behavior and my mom understands. It happens almost everytime we see her!! So just find the weak points to work with I would probably say, and just go with the flow instead of getting upset.