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Separation Anxiety: Part 2
K continues to be very nervous about separation and as soon as she thinks I may be leaving the house, or she is going to bed, etc, she starts this routine:
K: Wait, mom, wait!
CM: yes?
K: don’t go!
CM: I have to go to work for a little while but I’ll be home soon (or whatever)
K: wait! I need a hug
CM: ok (hugs and smoochies)
K: wait! I need another hug
CM: ok but I have to go…
K: wait! Mynxie [the smartest ferret of them all--another post for another day] has something to say to you!
CM: HUH? (mentally: has she totally lost her three year old marbles?)
K: yes, Mynxie says… (mumble mumble mumble)
CM: what? can you say that again?
K: Mynxie says…(mumble mumble mumble mutter mutter mutter)
CM: Oh, ok then, that’s very nice. I love you–see you soon! (yep, marbles are totally lost)
She has repeated this scenario at least 4 times. Um…..?
Separation Anxiety
It’s a drag.
And fortunately, not something I’ve had to deal with much, because K has always been a pretty self-sufficient, self-confident little person. But not today.
I should preface this by saying she is NOT a morning person, in the slightest. She hates it just as much as her parents do. Seriously–this kid given the chance will sleep in until about 11am every day. While this is a major bonus for us on the weekends, it makes it really difficult to get her going on school mornings.
So today, she started off even crankier than usual, probably because I pushed the issue with using the potty before getting dressed. She gets very irritated at me when I demand she does her business first thing in the morning. We finally got ready but right before leaving I had to take care of a couple quick things in the house, and so sent her out with FF to get buckled up. While they were waiting, he turned the van on so that she could watch her DVD, and she had a panicky fit about leaving without me. Urg.
And then. Prechool. I unloaded the girls and got them into the school, signed them in, chatted with the perky grad students, and gave kisses and hugs and expected them to skip on out to the playground like usual. K got a funny look on her face and came back for another hug. Then another. (mental Mommy conversation: this isn’t good). The perky grad student tried to distract her with conversation about stickers, and potty. The kid is too smart for such juvenile attempts. At this point she was whimpering and clutching my leg and really working up to it. (crapmonkies!…this would be the morning I have to leave right away). I offer to walk her out to the playground–usually a surefire way to redirect her attention. Whimpered all the way out, hanging onto my hand for dear life. Got to the playground area and Ms. perky started telling K all about the director’s puppy that was visiting for the day. STILL no go and now she is crying. (now what do I do? she’s never done the anxiety thing this seriously before…? probably bad form to leave my screaming kid with perky grad students that may or may not have been vomited on by my child before).
At that point I had to basically just cut losses and hope for the best. I kissed her again and told her I loved her and would see her after school. Ms Perky held onto her while I made a fast getaway with sounds of her terrified crying following me all the way.
(more internal self-discussion: well that was just great. Have I scarred her for life? Will she forever be scared of perky grad students? Should I go open a savings account for all the therapy she will need to have a normal adulthood? What can I do to avoid this scenario in the future, aside from pawning off morning delivery to K2′s Dad? Could I guilt him into that? Probably not, after making his child the notorious un-star of the week. And how did K have radar for the fact that this is just about the only day that I truly couldn’t spend more time while she got comfortable at school? Is she monitoring my work calendar? [this is quite possible--I will address this scenario in a future post] Hidden cameras? Psychic? HOW DO I DEAL WITH SEPARATION ANXIETY?!)
Yes, another day in crazy clueless mom paradise.
Let’s talk about preschool
Subtitle: and the way I ruined my niece’s life
We’ll get to dear niece K2 in a moment. First, let’s talk about preschool. Starting around 18 months or so (no exaggeration!), K started talking about going to school. Riding the bus, playing with friends, the whole bit. Again, thank you books and TV for pre-programming my daughter for life success. Anyway, back in the old days of life, I had never thought to put K into school until at least Kindergarten, if not 1st grade, so as to allow her free, unstructured, creative time to be a kid. I figured hey–she has her cousin K2 (and other out of town cousins to visit periodically too) so she’ll be well socialized and well stimulated. Hah! reality check. Seeing as the little sponge decided she was pretty much ready well before the age of 2 (!) I was barely able put her off for a year. The notion of sending her away to a foreign environment, and the opening up of the whole wild world to her was exciting, but mostly heartbreaking because it really, really meant she wouldn’t be my sweet little baby anymore. Not that I have any control issues.
One of the perks of working in certain higher education environments is the availability of high-quality, on-campus preschools staffed with child development experts, speech pathologists, education researchers, and oodles of graduate students perkier than a Starbucks doubleshot. And to my unbelievable luck, there happened to be just such a nurturing niche in my very own office building! I am talking about play and language-arts based curriculum 2 days a week with class enrollments less than 12 kids, with at least 5 adults to go around. Hallelujah. And wouldn’t you know it, that they had 2 slots open in the same class for the spring semester…so that K and K2 could even start school together! And a tuition discount for being an employee! Double hallelujah!
So we (both sets of parents and girls) enrolled, we paperworked, we visited, and we prepared for this fortuitous arrangement. The girls were so excited, and asked about school just about every day between the visit and the start of the semester. I however, while mentally excited and relieved at the serendipitous circumstances, was not what I’d call emotionally excited. I kept telling myself…at least she’d be going to school in the same building so surely my separation anxiety couldn’t be too bad?
Not.
I had a steadily increasing feeling of dread working up to The Big Day. What the hell is wrong with me anyway? I mean, hey, it’s not like I’m sending her off to boarding school in Germany! But nonetheless, these inexplicable things happen to you as a parent and I find its better to just freaking roll with it than to try and analyze.
FF, being the wonderfully supportive and brave man he is, came with me on The Big Day to see the girls off. I was quite literally having mini panic attacks all morning and find that my memories of that morning are a bit hazy and spotty. Again, WTF IS WRONG WITH ME? But anyway, after kissing them on the heads, and soothing one mini meltdown (from K, but not K2), they were off. The class director greeted us at the sign-in station and pointed to 2 stacks of papers for the parents to pick up. Being flustered and wanting to escape into a dark, quiet hole where I could lick my emotional wounds, I only managed to grab one set of the papers.
One was a newsletter flier with information on the first 5 weeks of class, and the other was a page with shapes and prompts to fill out random information about your child, so that they could create a “star of the week” poster when it came to be their turn in the rotation. Simple enough, right, but remember, being cluelessmom here, I sort of skimmed the rotation list, didn’t see either girl’s name, and blanked out the whole thing.
To make a long story short, not only did I not get a set of papers for K2′s parents, but I forgot to copy them a set for about 2 weeks. One day, K2′s dad was on duty to pick up the girls from school, and he got some funny looks and comments about K2′s “star of the week” poster (oh and they are supposed to bring snack, too). He had no idea what they were talking about.
Yes, people, I managed to mis-read the rotation list AND not deliver a copy of the papers and so caused 4 (!) adults to miss the vital information about K2′s opportunity to shine. And her Dad took the rap for it. The sweet people at the preschool covered our flub by helping her make the shapes on site, took a quick digital picture on site, and make the poster, so she wasn’t completely the UNSTAR of the week, but still. No snack, no lovingly attended-to parental shapes, nada.
And so I have unwittingly set her on the path of un-recognition, anonymity, and unremarkableness.
WORST.aunt.ever.
