My kiddo is coming up on her 4th birthday in June, just for age reference. She's been with her daycare for almost 2 years, and a home daycare before that from the time she was 3 months old so she's no stranger to daycare. She usually loves going, has a great time, and was moved up to the 4 year old classroom in February because her teachers thought she's ready for an older group. According to her teachers in the 4s group, she's doing really well "academically", gets along with all the kids, eats well, naps well, etc.

In the last couple of weeks, she has been really clingy and upset when we drop her off. She's very verbal but won't tell us if anything is bothering her. My husband does dropoff and pickup 95% of the time due to our commutes, and talked to her teachers to see if something might be happening, and they were just as puzzled. They say she's usually fine after we leave, and has a great time all day, doing well, etc. We also have a hard time picking her up in the afternoon, because she's busy with activities and doesn't want to leave so it's even more weird that she doesn't want to stay. However, she always says that she didn't have a good day when we ask her afterwards, but again, won't give us anything specific.

I know dropoff anxiety is normal, but this is new to us so I'm wondering if there are any good tips to manage this. We do all the usual things that are recommended - we try not to linger, her teachers will help distract her, etc., and I don't have any concerns, especially after talking with her teachers, that something is going on at school that's upsetting her. We haven't had any transitions in our lives recently or anything I can think of that would bring this on suddenly. I went with them today for dropoff thinking maybe if I was there it would be easier, but that didn't help either.

Possibly related but probably not, we have noticed that she also wants to eat a lot more than usual lately. Her teachers mentioned she usually asks for double lunch (they feed them lunch and two snacks and she has a full breakfast at home). Yesterday she inhaled 3 slices of pizza (minus crust) and a bowl of oatmeal before bed. She's a fairly small kid from birth (currently 32 lbs at almost 4 year old) so this might be a growth spurt/development thing, but coupled with the dropoff anxiety, I'm not sure if there might be something bigger? She's a super happy kid overall, sleeps well, no other issues that I can tell.