Stress from Overnight Visitation for 2 1/2 year old

My daughter is 2 1/2 years old.  Her father was absent for the first year and a half of her life.  A year ago he began supervised visitation once a week for an hour at a court appointed facility.  After four months supervised visits were changed to her grandparents house (his parents) for a minimum of 4 hours twice a week, usually one weekday night for 2 hours and 6-8 hours on the weekends.  Six months after that supervised visits became unsupervised and the time was changed to twice a week 4:30 to 7:30pm and every other Saturday from 10am to 7:30pm.  She seemed to adjust well to all of these changes.  The unsupervised visits have only been going on for the last 2 months when he wanted to begin overnights.  I agreed and there have been two overnight visits so far.  The weekend following her first overnight there was an incident in which my mom and I had taken my daughter on a day trip.  When we returned it was dark outside.  I got out of the car for a brief moment and my daughter began screaming and crying for "Mum mum".  She was extremely distressed.  My mom and I had never seen this type of insecure behavior from her in the past.  My mom suggested the recent overnight visit with her dad as the source of this sudden change.  This past weekend was her second overnight visit and when she came home she was very disagreeable.  She was agitated and threw tantrums the entire car ride home.  She acted this way the entire day which is not like her at all.  She enjoys her dad but I am concerned these overnight visits are disruptive to her.  Could it be too much too soon?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

It is too early to say. The change to overnight is a big change, and I don't think it is prudent for such a young child. But time will tell. She may well adapt to the schedule and it deserves a fair trial (e.g., for several months).