How to calm down a small child crying after his mother

[luqqzr]

Hey,

I see that my two year old nephew always desperately cries after his mother when she's not near him.

It goes on like forever and never stops until he gets distracted with for example watching YouTube videos for kids.

Often his mother brings him to my grandmother, because sometimes she has to go to work, go to the gym or other stuff.

Everytime he starts crying she just starts the TV and the problem is "gone" until his mother arrives at him again.

In my opinion this seems like a distraction of those emotional feelings when the mother is gone.

What I'm asking myself is: Am I thinking too much about this? Is it okay to just let him watch the videos? Is he too small to talk to about this? I've tried it but he won't listen at all. He's just crying for hours saying "maaama, maaama ?".

Edited April 27, 2019 by luqqzr

[OctagonOctopus]

Let him cry, there is nothing you can do he will learn eventually. Defiantly too young for a logical conversation about it, hahaha. Although I too am concerned about how the younger generations are constantly distracting themselves with constant stimulation, its the reason there is such an influx of ADHD/ ADD diagnoses.  So maybe try to find other things so that you can play with him?

[luqqzr]

@OctagonOctopus I thought about letting him cry too, but I'm concerned about him feeling that he's not given the right amount of love needed in these situations.

Just a few hours before, this happened again. My mother (his grandma) turned on the TV and I told her to turn it off to not let him run away from these emotions. Then he started crying again for his mother.

I think we handled the situation better this time. We did some other stuff where most of the time he was still crying, we went out to get some fresh air, then played a bit with his toys, painted, etc.

He usually stops crying when watching TV and now he didn't.