Idk why but I was so clingy to my mom as a kid. Like I think I always had separation anxiety.
Like examples:
My mom would hold my hand when I’m outside. Sometimes I was the one initiating it.
If I’m like on a subway/bus and I was tired, I’d like to rest my head on my mom’s lap and I’d kinda feel safe.
I remember when I’m supposed to go to sleep, sometimes, actually very frequently, I went to my parents room and sleep on their bed. (I shared a room with my older brother, I didn’t like him)
Also, on public transit I feel very anxious if there is only like 2 empty seats and like they are far apart and especially if the seats are facing a direction when we can’t both see each other. So my mom just stand next to me and I sat down. And like sometimes my mom would ask the person next to me to switch seats and like point to the empty seat somewhere else on the subway/bus.
And omg bathrooms are the worst part.
I was old enough so I felt like I can’t go with my mom anymore as I had when I was like 6 or something. So I feel like I had to use the male bathroom as a cis-male. So like I finish using the bathroom, then I had to wait for my mom, and she sometimes takes like minutes, which felt like hours to me…
I sometimes worry if like she died or something. Or worse, she abandoned me. So I’d literally call her by her full name and only feel fine if I hear a response from her. (I wasn’t supposed to use the full name, especially not in my culture)
Oh and this one is probably gonna confuse you.
So one night my mom got mad at me for some reason, so I cried in the livingroom and refused to sleep. Then I suddenly feel like there are ghosts around me and like… I usually don’t feel like initiating conversation with parents after getting yelled at… but I felt scared and so I decided to just tell mom I was scared, even tho I felt the awkwardness of just feeling like I hated her a minute ago, but I felt like I had no choice but to seek comfort with mom because there are ghosts. (I don’t believe in ghosts anymore, but I was a kid and I was scared of everything)
These are just a few examples I could think of on top of my head.
This level of clingyness lasted like… I think I remembered started being slowly less clingy after 12 years old.
I remember one of my aunts pointed it out when I was 8-12, she told my mother: “Wow, you son is so 嗲¹”
¹[嗲 (Cantonese) (of a child, girl, woman, pet, etc.) to act coy, childish, or cute to someone who loves or dotes on them, in order to fulfil their wish or display their affection](I think that’s supposed to mean like I act too cute/childish.)
Did anyone else like do that?
Am I weird for being clingy or is this normal?
Context: I’m a young adult now, I definitely don’t do the clingyness thing anymore. But I still have the separation anxiety issue. Like heartbeat goes up if I had to live/sleep in a place away from home. (e.g. College Aparments)
That’s normal. Children are supposed to bond with their parents until adolescence. It means your parents did a good job.
Sounds like a pretty common experience to me.
I dont think “separation anxiety” is clinically diagnosable. Its a term to describe the natural concerns that arise when you do something youre uncomfortable with.
Like this morning I dropped my kids at day care. They always cry when I leave. They dont “have” or “suffer from” separation anxiety, but that might describe why theyre unhappy.
Its perfectly natural to be apprehensive about big life changes. There’s a myriad of different ways to respond to these feelings. I think the most important is to just acknowledge that some apprehension is fine and appropriate. Next is to just learn more about what its going to be like, ask others who have done that.
I have an 8 year old son and he’s extremely clingy. He wasn’t that way last year, but it’s a phase that will end, and I’m enjoying it, mostly. I’d say it’s common as kids seem to really start thinking about their surroundings at that age, and the world is a scary place that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I never really liked to be touched much. And I was usually pretty happy spending time on my own. I did like to share a bed after a nightmare sometimes.
When I was around 7 or 8 my mom left me in a play area at an IKEA with like a climbing frame in a ballbath. After she was done shopping she wanted to picked me up, but I wanted to stay. So she basically did thing where she told me she’s leaving without me and pretended to leave. But I didn’t mind and eventually she got tired of waiting, came back and told me that we had to go.
Childhood memories felt distant, but looking back, when I was small, I generally like doing things in my own corner, or going out on my own if I can.
I felt close to my father, enjoyed ask him all sorts of questions like he knew everything, and often worried he might died or went missing, and I’ll became an orphan. Never felt close to my mother.
I also remember I loved one of our family cat very much, but they gave him away. I loved my rooster that I grow from a chicken very much, but they ate him.
I would consider this unusually clingy for the age. But I’m no doctor. Acting like that past age 6 is a bit meh and after 8 feels definitely off. That’s just my opinion.
Now that doesn’t mean feeling anxious for spending time away from home is unusual. That can be rough, you are facing a lot of unknowns simultaneously -unknown amenities, new people sharing your environment, plus the stress of keeping up with studies. It’s okay. I’d also be on edge in that situation. A lot can go wrong and you have little control or contingency methods.
Oh yea I forgot to mention, for context: 8 years old was when I just immigrated to the US with my family… so… yeah…
Maybe that has is a factor to me being much more clingy, back then almost everyone looked “foreign” to me.
