The "Where Is Mama" Phase Is Ruining My Ping

14.3 seconds. I checked my smartwatch. That’s exactly how long it took me to walk from the living room play area, step over the dog gate, open the fridge, grab a lime seltzer, and walk back. But when I crossed back over the threshold, my 11-month-old was face-down on the organic cotton rug, screaming like I had been beamed up by a rogue satellite and taken to a different galaxy.

I dropped the seltzer. I scooped him up. I checked his temperature (98.6, perfectly normal). I checked his diaper (dry, thankfully, because I had just logged a massive change twelve minutes prior). There was nothing physically wrong with him. He was just absolutely, fundamentally devastated that I had left his line of sight.

I was doomscrolling Reddit at 3 AM a few nights ago while he used my left clavicle as a mattress, and I saw this weird AI trend. People are typing "i am a baby deer where is mama" into these advanced chatbots just to trick the AI into roleplaying as a comforting mother animal. It’s supposed to be a joke, but I stared at the screen in the dark and thought, wow, my son is literally a baby deer right now. He freezes, he panics, and he assumes that if the primary caregiver is gone, the wolves are basically already in the room.

My wife's tracking app and the 90s producer

My wife, Sarah, tracks every single metric of this kid's life. We use this shared app, and it’s basically my second full-time job. She affectionately named his profile Baby D on the main dashboard.

Last Tuesday, in a sleep-deprived haze where my brain felt like dial-up internet, I tried to log his morning oatmeal intake and accidentally typed his name in as Baby Dee. Sarah texted me from her office downtown exactly four seconds later asking if I thought we were raising a 90s hip-hop producer. I just wanted to log the oats, Sarah. But looking at the data, I realized that Baby D's meltdowns directly correlated with the physical distance between his body and our bodies.

Apparently, this is just what happens when you've a baby and they hit the 10-to-11-month mark.

Debugging the invisible parent glitch

I obviously googled everything, which you're never supposed to do, but then I brought my spreadsheet of concerns to Dr. Aris at our last checkup. I explained the kitchen-seltzer incident. I explained that going to the bathroom requires a hostage negotiation.

Dr. Aris mumbled something about a healthy attachment phase and object permanence, which essentially means my kid’s brain is undergoing a major firmware update. Before this, if I left the room, I just sort of magically ceased to exist in his UI. Out of sight, out of mind. But now, he knows I still exist somewhere in the universe, he just has zero concept of time or spatial latency.

He doesn't know if I'm getting a seltzer for 14 seconds or if I've joined the merchant marines and will return in six years. His brain just throws a critical error: Parent missing. Initiate alarm. I try to explain the physics of the house to him, showing him that the kitchen is right there, but you can't really reason with someone who recently tried to eat a handful of carpet fuzz.

The psychological warfare of peek-a-boo

Dr. Aris suggested we play more peek-a-boo to help him understand that things come back, which sounds cute until you realize peek-a-boo is basically just low-grade exposure therapy for infants.

I analyzed the mechanics of it yesterday on the living room floor. You put your hands over your face, effectively deleting yourself from their visual server. The baby's system freezes. You can see the panic loading in their eyes. Then, right before the crying sequence executes, you open your hands and yell "peek-a-boo," and they experience a massive dump of relief-adrenaline and start laughing.

We do this over and over. I was sitting there, logging exactly how many times I could hide my face before he stopped laughing and just started crying from the sheer existential stress of it all, and the average is about 11 iterations before the system completely crashes.

Whatever you do, never try to just sneak out the back door while they're distracted because the betrayal will ruin your entire week.

Hardware that actually helps

Since I can't just pause the separation anxiety phase, I've had to implement some workarounds. Sarah is huge on sustainable, non-toxic stuff, which makes sense because this kid puts everything in his mouth like it's his job to taste-test the whole house.

Our absolute favorite distraction tool right now is this Deer Teething Rattle Wooden Ring Sensory Toy we got from Kianao. It’s kind of ironic that it's a deer, given the whole "where is mama" baby deer vibe. But this thing is a lifesaver. It’s got this untreated beechwood ring and a crochet deer head. When I need to step away to grab a wipe or check the mail, I hand this to him. The texture of the crochet and the hardness of the wood act like a temporary RAM cache for his anxiety. He aggressively gnaws on it, and the little rattle sound keeps his auditory processors occupied just long enough for me to leave and come back before the meltdown timer hits zero. Plus, Sarah doesn't yell at me about microplastics when he chews on it.

We also have the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set set up in the corner. It's fine. It looks nice in the living room and doesn't play annoying electronic music, and it bought me exactly four minutes of peace yesterday while he stared at the hanging wooden shapes. It's not a miracle worker for the separation panic, but it's a decent physical anchor point for independent play.

If you're also currently trying to buy yourself three minutes to make coffee without a tiny human clinging to your shin, you should probably browse Kianao's organic soothing tools before your kid realizes you looked away from them.

The transitional object protocol

The other thing our doctor mentioned, wrapped in a lot of "every baby is different" disclaimers, was introducing a transitional object. A lovie. Something that smells like us that he can hold onto when the primary servers (Sarah and me) are offline or out of the room.

Sarah vetoed using our old throw pillows, so we use the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with Polar Bear Print. It's incredibly soft, and apparently, the GOTS-certified organic cotton means it hasn't been blasted with weird chemicals. I try to sleep with it tucked under my arm for a few hours so it absorbs my scent, which feels ridiculous, but it actually works.

When I've to put him in his playpen to take a work call, I hand him the polar bear blanket. He buries his face in it and just kind of breathes. Our doctor was very clear that we can't leave soft blankets in the crib while he sleeps because of safety risks, so I'm constantly hovering over the baby monitor like a paranoid security guard waiting to sprint in and snatch the blanket away the second his eyes close. It's exhausting, but everything about this year is exhausting.

I guess the takeaway is that I just have to keep dropping a cheerful "be right back" and walking out the door while my heart slowly implodes to the sound of his crying, knowing that eventually, his brain will figure out I haven't abandoned him to the wolves.

If you need gear that actually helps them self-soothe while you hide in the pantry for sixty seconds, check out Kianao’s full lineup of sustainable baby products.

Dad's troubleshooting FAQ for the clingy phase

Why does my baby panic when I just go to the kitchen?
Apparently, they literally don't understand that you still exist behind the wall. Their brain hasn't installed the object permanence patch yet. To them, walking into the kitchen is the equivalent of you evaporating into thin air.

Should I just sneak away while they're playing?
I tried this exactly once and the resulting meltdown was apocalyptic. If you sneak out, they realize they can't trust you, so they start clinging to you 100% of the time. You have to tell them you're leaving, even if they cry.

How long does this separation anxiety bug last?
Dr. Aris told me it peaks around 10 to 18 months. I almost passed out when I heard "18 months." It fades eventually, but right now we're just surviving day by day.

Can I leave the organic blanket in the crib to help them sleep?
No, definitely not. I googled the AAP guidelines and my doctor confirmed it. No soft stuff in the crib for sleep under 12 months. I only let him cuddle the polar bear blanket when he's awake and I'm staring directly at him.

Does baby-wearing help?
Yes, immensely. When the teething rattle fails and the play gym is boring, strapping him to my chest is the only way I can successfully use my keyboard to write code or make a sandwich.