Anyone else have a "pandemic baby" that is too attached?

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I am a 39 yo father of 4. So far - and this is really unrelated to this post but it provides some context - 3 out of 4 of our kids appear to be non verbal ASD. The oldest is 7 and has said less than 100 words total. It is similar with my 5 yo son.

With my third, who is a 2 yo daughter, she said a few words but then stopped and its been months since she has said any word, let alone a new one. We have a 7 mo son we call "Smiley" because he... smiles all the time. Its cute.

Anyways, so this is about the 2 yo daughter. She was born right as the pandemic started and I have been home every day of her life. Around 3 months, she started to REALLY like me more than mom. By 6 months, she had begun a habit of falling asleep in my arms around 1-2 PM daily. I was able to do it because I have a job I can easily do with a laptop and kid on me.

So... welcome to today. She screams at me whenever I leave the room. I am not talking "wah" at the top of her lungs. She will literally scream until she throws up.

If I go to the bathroom, she screams and bangs on the door. If I talk to my wife - she screams! She doesn't like me talking to anyone else. She loves going to the supermarket with me and one time I saw a neighbor there - he tried to say hello but she suddenly turned on the largest fit I had ever seen. Conveniently, she turned it off and started giggling when we walked away.

Its gotten to the point where my wife jokes that shes my "jealous girlfriend." I know thats weird to say about a daughter but that is how I would describe her behavior. If I sit next to my wife on the couch, she will come running over and sit in between us and then get on her back and kick my wife away.

At first it was funny, but it is driving me crazy. I find it difficult to do anything I want to do. I hate to admit this, but I hold her in my lap a lot while working. One time I accidentally hit the video button on a meeting with my boss and he saw I was holding her. He laughed and was ok with it. She is generally well tempered if I am holding her.

I volunteered to go to the office one day a week at least to get away from her. I have a home office but often when I got into that, I can hear her screaming for me from it. However, I really can't be away from home that much because as I mentioned, I have 2 other kids who are nonverbal ASD and they are homeschooled because 1) they reverted in potty training, 2) refuse to keep clothes on. So, really no school will take them at this time. If I leave too much my wife my lose it.

Someday, if she ever dates anyone and is possessive of them, I will be like, "hah, I saw that coming."

My daughter was a bit like that , I would say just accept it as love cos she won't always be like that. One day, you will actually miss it.

Has anyone else shown you love like that?

I did burn out from looking after my daughter for too many hours per day,too many days of the week. Then I backed off from her and our relationship went downhill a bit. So now I look back on the possessive days with nostalgia.

My son wasn't as extreme but was pretty attached. Having another child pushed me to force him out of his neediness, but, honestly, it was a painful process and I wish I had been able to let the neediness run its course. With kids, pretty much everything eventually does.

I think I would try starting a gentle, chatty dialogue with her about human beings sometimes needing space, relationships with multiple people, endless capacity to love etc. Even if that dialogue is one sided, it might start to weed its way into her brain that "Daddy doesn't love me any less / Daddy isn't going to leave me / etc" just because he "talks to / pays attention to / shows affection to" someone else."

Thank god I never had kids, just the mental image of this kid screaming like a banshee and making herself sick is like a nightmare to me. Toddlers are little demons.

I don't remember ever being that abnormally attached to my parents even though I loved them, especially my mom. I preferred doing most things alone.

I was a bit like it with my mum when I was a small child, although I didn't kick and scream though. If she was hanging the clothes on the clothes line outside I'd get really anxious and ask other family members where she was, I might even tell her off when she came back in for "leaving me".

I also still had separation anxiety at school when I was 6, but that might have been because I didn't like my teacher. When I was about 4 or 5 I remember having a screaming fit when my mum had to drop me off at school late because I'd had an appointment. I think I thought I was getting a day off that day (even though I was dressed in my school uniform). When my teacher came along to take me inside I screamed so much I thoughtt lungs would bleed. I remember just feeling sheer panic. I calmed down once I was inside.