difficult child 3 was a bit like this with easy child. He attached to her VERY strongly; she is 12 years older than him. So when she was 14/15 and first going out with BF1 (yep, very long-standing relationship, that one) we discovered that difficult child 3 didn't like to share. We'd arranged a family outing to the city, meeting BF1 there (he lived in a different city). difficult child 3 was OK with meeting BF1, but whenever BF1 got too physically close to easy child difficult child 3 wouldbegin to scream and throw a tantrum. difficult child 3 was in a stroller at the time and when we stopped to have lunch, I had to park the stroller facing away from easy child & BF1, and told them to make sure that difficult child 3 didn't glimpse them. Over the day we did a lot of family fun things together (filmed it all) and it was all OK with difficult child 3, except when BF1 got too close to easy child. Every time.
This happened at the next outing (but less so) and later on by the third, difficult child 3 was still clingy with easy child but not throwing tantrums.
And now to difficult child 1 - this goes back to before we knew there was a problem. He was clearly different to easy child but we put that down to him being a different personality, he was a boy, he was the second child... everyone kept telling me to not worry, to not see things that weren't there. I was working full-time so the kids were in long day care, from 12 weeks old. I spent every break time with them and continued to breastfeed (with all the kids). The centre was a really good one, the staff were instructed to not have favourites because that would cause problems when a 'pet' staff member had to leave the room or was on leave.
difficult child 1 was a gorgeous kid, cuddly, snuggly and good-looking. And despite all efforts, one staff member became too important to difficult child 1, he would cry whenever she left the room. He would only go to her, nobody else could do anything with him. The director was angry at her staffer although the staffer insisted she had done her best to avoid it. This close attachment lasted for several years, until he 'graduated' out of her care. And even afterwards, he would often be found leaning on the connecting stable door looking into the room where his favourite teacher was.
It was bizarre - she really had not done anything to encourage this. It had just happened.
Then with difficult child 3 and his tight bond with easy child - it had just happened. I mean, I was still breastfeeding him, for pete's sake! But I would give him a feed and as soon as he was finished he would push away from me to look for easy child. A doctor who was treating easy child for bad headaches at one point noted how difficult child 3 climbed straight onto her lap and asked her, "Did you have these headaches while you were pregnant?"
She looked at us, confused, than answered the doctor. "Um - I'm only 14, I would have had to be pregnant when I was 11," she explained. "He's my brother."
The rapid development of the habit is something I now feel is a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) trait. It also eased (in both cases) with time. In the meantime we had to treat it with patience and with encouragement to help each of the boys 'stretch' themselves, to learn to be a bit braver in accepting change and challenge. Anxiety makes it a lot worse. And to work on it, you have to sort of desensitise them to the things that upset them, that worry them. It's a long, patient process and it took us years. But we've made amazing progress, much more than we ever thoguht we would.
Marg