When the Ingredients Separate

Poor Abigail. We have been experiencing some separation anxiety lately. What makes it worse is that I am the only one who does drop off with the exception of one day a month when I have a 7 AM meeting. We have no idea where this came from. Abigail has been going to the same day care center since she was 5 months old. Granted she gets a new teacher every year but everything else is the same. Same core group of kids, same location, same cafeteria, etc. The only real change has been the food and for the better! I liked their menu before but now it is including neat things like fettuccini alfredo with broccoli and chicken noodle soup. They still get pizza and chicken nuggets but only once a month.

So back to the problem at hand. Drop off hasn’t always been good but this year we settled into a routine in the 3-4 year old room. Abigail would help me take Madeline to her room. Madeline is content to give a kiss and runs over to her friend Riley where she is greeted with a plethora of baby dolls. Madeline LOVES baby dolls. She likes to put them face down, say “night night shhhh” and puts a blanket over them. Total cuteness. But that is for another post. We had been going great until December. We took the kids out for a week between Christmas and New Years like we do every year. I am off of work, Josh is off of work and my parents are usually in town. Plus we save a week of tuition. It is a win/win situation. The first week back was easy but starting the second week of day care, meltdown city. I don’t know what changed but Abigail couldn’t let me go. I had to peel her off of me and let her sit on the floor in a pile of whiney while I went to work. Not really what I want at 7:30 in the morning to start off my day. Josh would get the scoop from her teacher at the end of the day and for a few days the report was Abigail being sad for a little and then after nap she was her happy, cheery self. Well, then came that one day that Josh had to drop her off. I called to check on things and was told she cried for Daddy for over an hour and had to go to the office. Great. Not only do I feel bad that my baby is so unhappy but she is disrupting class so much that she had to go to the front office. Now, the front office at day care is not like going to the office when you are bad. The front office staff had her sit in a chair and read some books to calm down. Abigail, being a book fiend, thought this was great. The next day the meltdown started before I was 3 minutes out of our driveway. I had to sit and talk through the crying and whining for almost 20 minutes before we got to school. This was just going downhill very quickly.

Josh talked to his mom and I talked to mine. We even called the pediatrician because not only was it affecting her, it was affecting me. I was so stressed out that I started to break out like a 15 year old. Not to mention, I am stressed at work. I can deal with being stressed at work and not home or vice versa. But both starts to take a toll on me. Such is life of a working mommy. Thankfully we could tell that she did not have a separation anxiety disorder (can actually result in physical results such as fever, vomiting, passing out, etc). Just a bad case of missing her mommy.

We actually thought we had it licked a couple of times because Abigail decided she wanted to be dropped off in the front office with the books. Fine with me and thankfully fine with the front office staff. Unfortunately, when it came time to go back to her classroom, she melted down. At least it wasn’t with me there. We tried rewards, stickers, happy faces, Ouija boards and nothing. Her teacher was even trying to help us by making Abby her special helper for the morning. Finally last week it started to work. Thursday morning came and Abigail said “I am going to be Ms. Wendy’s special helper today and make you happy Mommy!” WORKS FOR ME! Sure enough, she went right in, kisses and hugs to me and went about being a special helper. Later that night we over did it on showering her with affection and how much she is a big girl. Friday was even better! Then of course the weekend came. Darn weekend!

Yesterday was sad but no crying. I had to say goodbye to the saddest face in the window of school. Her little bottom lip curled out and her eyes on the brink of tears. I just made silly faces and got into my car. Today there were no real tears until she was running to the window to give me a kiss through the glass…and banged her hand on the counter which just brought sad face and tears. Great.

Just have to keep taking this one day at a time. And she thinks this is just hard on her!