u/creatingcolors

This is long winded please bear with me

Looking for some advice on attachment

My daughters 5, 11 are both very mom-oriented and want to be near me/close to me a lot.

I carried my oldest around until I physically couldn’t anymore and we were always together (first few years of her life it was just the two of us)

My youngest is 5 and still lays with me/sits all the time.

Sometimes they will be competitive over me which I always disengage with something firmly equal.

Now the problem—

I can get touched out/overstimulated by my 5 year old, but overall I’m very comfortable with the closeness.

With my 11 year old for some reason I feel so uncomfortable and really stiffen up when she wants to cuddle or lay next to me. She’s always been very squirmy so part of it came from trying to disassociate from being overstimulated so she could get the physical contact that she needed

But now I’m starting to feel like it’s because my relationship with my kids is so different from my relationship with my mom. I can’t ever imagine trying to spoon sleep with my mom at 11, or have long hugs or sit on her lap and cry to her if I were upset.

I don’t know if its my relationship with my mom, my five year old taking up a lot of my energy or just a biological reaction to my daughter getting older and in theory becoming more independent that causes this weird averse reaction in me

I really want to figure it out because my daughter can sense it and it makes her feel bad.

Example: my five year old still sleeps with me and when my husband isn’t home my 11 year old will sometimes sleep with us too. Tonight my 5 year old was in the middle of the bed and fell asleep. My 11 year old then came into the space between me and five year old to sleep right next to me, hugging me from behind, all three of us in half of the bed.

I had to reach over her several times to adjust my 5 year olds position because her breathing gets really strained/limited at night. I was feeling frustrated by having no space to myself and the breathing difficulties and my 11 year d picked up on it and went into her room

I went in a few minutes later to talk to her/tuck her in and she said she feels like her younger sister gets all of my time and that she’s not special

I promise you I pour so much energy into this child. I think about her and worry about her more than my other kids (for specific reasons) and we have great talks and have so much fun together (concerts, trips, we laugh a lot)

It’s literally just the physical touch that’s so hard for me in excess

I don’t know what’s wrong with me but please start guessing so I can fix it 😩😩😩

———

My 5 year old is smart, sensitive, hilarious, makes and maintains friendships easily and is so observant of people.

She has strong feelings, she hides them in public (like at school for example) but release them with me. Including sadness and anger.

All of that feels meaningful and normal.
And then she has this mode that’s out of control and destructive. She says‘my inside tells me one thing and my outside does another’ — and I don’t know how to help her”

—

In this mode she goes into where she does any and everything to get a negative reaction out of her older sisters or me. She says things that she knows makes them upset, and when we correct it she doubles down until I have to physically remove her.

Tonight she was biting her sisters brand new birthday blanket. Once my 11 yo started getting upset, she did it again. I remove her and sternly tell her she needs to stop (paraphrasing) she darts back and bites it a third time.

I had to place her in the hallway kicking and screaming and shut the door behind me to give my 11 year old her security back.

She eventually calms down. She comes downstairs with me as I finish winding down the house for the night. We head back upstairs. I had placed my computer on the third step so I could bring it upstairs. I see her look it. Pause for just shy of a second and then choose to step directly on it.

I get upset and ask her why she would choose to do that. She told me she didn’t see it but I let her know I watched her look at it. Finally she breaks a bit and says “I don’t know. Sometimes my inside tells me one thing and my outside does something else”

This is maybe the third time she’s expressed her inside not matching her outside.

Last week, in the middle of another instance she said, “I don’t know. Sometimes when someone tells me not to do something I just have to do it”

She’s genuinely upset and reflective as she says this.

When she’s not in this mode, she’s so generous, she often is a peacekeeper when playing with her older sisters. She gets attention and quality time.

When it first started happening (around 3 or 4) I thought it was a way of exerting control because her older sisters often call the shots or at least try to call the shots when they’re all playing together.

But the way she articulates this compulsion to do something that she’s doesn’t truly want to do feels so significant.

I want to help her and I have no idea where to start. As an ADHD mom I’m not very rigid or structured but we’re not in full chaos all the time. Does she need more structure?

If anyone has any experience or ideas please let me know. The behavior is really affecting my 11 year old (who already has past trauma with bullying) and it breaks my heart to see the family feel so negative and tense around my baby🥺

I want to understand what’s going on with her so I can support her properly and get some peace back in our household.

For context it happens several days per week. She’s in kindergarten and it’s very tiring for her, but the behavior started in preschool.

Tia