She's just that way

My daughter doesn't like you. Don't take it too personal. She's always been a wary child. We have tons of video showing my daughter crying as various people try to hold her. She only likes me or her daddy, and sometimes she doesn't even want me.

I don't know what to do about this. I just roll with it most of the time and just accept the fact that my daughter only wants to be around the two of us. It, however, makes guest visits very awkward. I make sure that I do not apologize on her behalf and I don't make excuses either. It's very easy to say, oh, she's teething, or she had a bad nap today, just to try and make the offender feel better. But, apparently it's important not to do that. Trust bonds blah blah blah.

We went to the beach today and I saw another mother having difficulty setting up her sun shade. She had a toddler she was trying to wrangle as well. I got up off my towel and offered to help her and she passed me her daughter (I thought I was going to set up the tent!). She sat on my hip and we laughed a bit, sang a song, those sorts of things while her mom finished setting everything up. She finished, grabbed her daughter and said, Thank you so much!

I walked back to my towel and realized that that would NEVER happen with my daughter. She would claw the stranger's eyes out before she let them hold her. To amplify my earlier concerns, today at lunch my brother commented, "ya, your daughter has serious attachment issues, you need to fix that." Thanks, my younger, unmarried, childless brother. My husband raised his eyebrows with a "see" type look in my direction. He also thinks she needs to be more accepting of others and does not like the fact I just shrug and have a "that's who she is" attitude.

Anyone who has been in her personal space since about 6 months of age has witnessed her complete meltdowns and two have been covered in her vomit. She will smile at you from afar, but get too close and she hates you. I'm sure she'll grow out of it (I've never seen a 10 year old that hides behind her mother's legs), but in the meantime she continues to cling to us.

Surprisingly, my son is the social one who will let anyone hold him, feed him, diaper him, drink & party with him, he just doesn't care. I try to point this out to people who start throwing my parenting skills into question (you need to take them out of the house more, you need to enroll them in pre-school). How can two children, raised identically, have such different "stranger" behaviors?

The only answer I can come up with is everyone is different. I'm somewhat introverted and tend to only be around people I like. My husband doesn't know a stranger and can instantly befriend anyone he meets. That's why I was the lab rat and he's the business man. This too shall pass but I do secretly hope she'll let my brother hold her before he leaves. Even if she fakes it.