Finally, you’re on vacation. At last you’re moving into the house of your dreams, with a fabulous backyard. Grandpa’s long illnetss and death has taken a toll on Grandma, but now she’s settling into a nursing home, and the whole family is relieved. After taking a couple of years off, you’re back at work and loving it. And, just as everything is looking up, your preschooler starts wetting his pants and won’t sleep through the night.  What happened?

T. Berry Brazelton, the much-loved expert on infant and toddler development, describes a preschooler’s past as his security, a safe place to go for comfort when the world seems too full of change, worrisome, even scary. When your child returns to once-broken habits, associated with a time when he was comforted, it’s understood as “regressive behavior,” a comfort to the child and your cue to provide extra attention.

The first order of business is to determine what new stress may have caused your child to return to comforts he seemed to have outgrown. (See examples at right.)

Life presents many challenges to a preschooler’s ability to stay on a perfectly even course of development. A new baby, a case of the flu, a parental conflict, a punishment: once you try to look at things from your child’s perspective it probably won’t be hard to figure out what has triggered her need to return to old comforts.

What’s the Problem?

    
• Family vacations may include activities more suitable for older family members than for a preschooler. Riding on a merry-go-round can be loud and seem chaotic. Don’t let your presumptions about what your child should like prevent you from noticing what she isn’t enjoying.
    
• No matter how great the new house is, younger children miss the old, familiar sounds and smells of the home they knew — especially those parts of the house they associated with comfort: a reading nook, a special hiding place. A move can be an occasion for grief to a preschooler.
    
• Children are attuned to their parents’ emotional lives, and grieving adults may be so overwhelmed by the complications caused by a loss that they haven’t much comfort to offer their young children. Preschoolers may be frightened by adults’ distress.
    
• Focused on the positive aspects of a new job, a mother returning to work may not consider that her child interprets it as an abandonment.

What should you do?

    
• Try not to react with frustration when your child regresses. Crying, clinging, asking for bottles you threw away last season, bedwetting: all of these are irritating. But if you insist your child just “get over it” you’re likely to see him insist even more strongly on the behavior you want to banish.
    
• A little sympathy can go a long way. During periods of family stress, plan an afternoon to do familiar things like reading aloud or just hanging out together. Both of you will feel better.
    
• Assure your child that you believe he’ll return to his “pre-developmental-decline” state soon, when he’s ready.
    
• Take comfort in the fact that regression is usually just for a few days. Compassion — allowing your child to return to the familiar, giving her an extra measure of affection — works wonders.

Mary L. Cox, Ph.D., is a retired child psychologist and grandmother of nine who volunteers at Cornell Cooperative Extension-Suffolk.