Hi, this is Janet Landsbury. Welcome to Unruffelt. Today I have a note here from the parent of a three and a half year old boy who is no longer breastfeeding but still very attached to his mother's breasts and this parent is having difficulty preventing her son from grabbing her and poking her, which makes her uncomfortable.

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Okay, here's the email I received. Hello Janet. I have a three and a half year old toddler boy. He's spirited, extroverted and delightful. He's also obsessed with my breasts. I nursed him until just shy of three. It was a long, slow, weaning process. He nursed to sleep and for comfort.

We weaned at last without too much trauma. However, he's still clingy and obsessed with my breasts. He loves to snuggle and smush his face into them.

Lately, he's gotten a bit rougher, wrapping his arms around one and trying to squeeze it. He also likes to poke them and laugh and smash them together with both hands. It's not fun.

My message all along has been that these are private areas and it's not okay to do that while also trying to be understanding and telling him that I will always snuggle him.

I don't want him to feel like I've denied him affection ever, but I do want him to stop manhandling me.

Oh, and we have tried snuggly substitutes like teddy bears, toy babies, but they're all discarded. Any advice would be so appreciated. Thank you.

So this is a fairly common issue that I hear about and the advice that I have around this also applies to any kind of personal boundary that we need to set with our children.

It could be about the way they're touching us, climbing on us, poking us, touching our faces.

What children need in these situations is clarity and for various reasons, it can be hard for us to be clear and assert ourselves to stick up for ourselves right away to say, no, no chance.

Not letting you do that.

And I find this really interesting. What's going on that is making it difficult for us to prevent our child from physically bothering us.

But first I want to go to our child's point of view and what our child needs.

Again, clarity.

Clarity and apparent who's confident and convicted in what's okay. The rules.

So in this case, this boy breastfed for an extended time until he was almost three.

And this mother says that he nursed to sleep and for comfort. So he did have the feeling that he needed to do that.

And then this mother decided to wean and she said it was a long slow weaning.

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