Are You My Monkey?

    In the classic children's book entitled "Are You My Mother?" a baby bird who hatched while his mother was away asks a dog, a cow, and even an airplane "Are You My Mother?" As a mom, I appreciate the sweet repetition in the story. I don't even mind reading it (over and over) to my son. But when life imitates literature, I get a little bit crazy. 

    Recently my son has become an intensely anxious little mama's boy. Don't get me wrong, he has ALWAYS been a mama's boy -- after all, his dad was gone on deployment for the first 13 months of his life. But in the last 10 days, my son started clinging like a monkey. One of Harry Harlow's monkeys, to be exact. (Remember from Intro Psych that Harlow studied attachment in baby rhesus monkeys raised with wire or cloth-covered surrogate mothers. His monkey subjects became fearful and timid, not wanting to try new things.)

   

  My previously courageous little monkey freaks out if I leave the room. He follows me everywhere, like a dog expecting a treat. When I take him to the gym, he sits down in the doorway and wails. I coax and cajole him all the way to the play room, and then I leave him. He curls up on the floor, head in his hands, and sobs. Just like Harlow's baby monkeys. Unlike those monkeys, as I leave the room a caregiver picks him up and cuddles him, ensuring him I'll be back.

    This is enough to give me a complex. I wonder what turned my son from an adventurous, sociable flirt into a needy, anxious little monkey? Maybe the enormous changes in our lives this spring/summer have finally caught up with us. Maybe my son is just going through a phase (but at almost 18 months he seems a bit old for stranger anxiety). I'll never know.

    What I do know is he's MY little monkey. And if I can't get to the gym for a workout, I'll do my leg extensions with a 25-lb. toddler anxiously clinging to my leg. And that will be workout enough.