I am getting very worried because my daughter (2 y, 4 m) is not growing out of a tendency she's shown over the past year. She has very strong negative reactions to most other children, unless they are a good bit older and they give her calm attention like an adult. This started a year ago when my friend stayed with us for several days with her son who is a year older than my daughter. She clearly came to resent him during the visit. The next 'trauma' came when I tried to start her in a babysitting group of 4 little girls around her age. My daughter screamed, cried, bit the caregiver, tried to escape, and after 3 days we all agreed it wasn't working.
This problem manifests as my daughter shouting NO! any time another child approaches her, and she even screams at children we just pass on the street or in the supermarket, for example. She doesn't know any suitably violent word so she yells made up ones like "Bop them away, Dack him away, Mack the little girl!" etc. Obviously, this is extremely tense for me.
After I held a cousin's new baby, my daughter started hating babies, too. She talks about it even when no babies are around, saying, "Scratch the babies, make them cry."
Most of the time she has been home with me or with a nanny while I work at home. I have tried over this year to take her to play groups, story hour, etc, but these events are fraught with anxiety for me because it so frequently turns into a miserable experience, and it doesn't seem to be helping her much, although sometimes she will stay calm provided she doesn't have to engage with the other children. Trying to encourage her to interact in a group activity makes her go rigid and start panicking.
I think she doesn't see the value of friendships with other children, and she is both afraid and jealous of them. I have had some issues with social phobia myself and it makes me so sad to imagine her going through the same things. Please, can anyone offer some suggestions?