Mia's Daycare Woes

My little Mia is charming us and breaking our hearts at the same time.  Although earlier this weekend I got to portray her feisty self as she one-upped her brother, the softer side of her has been putting our family through even greater emotional turmoil lately as we all struggle to help her through her latest ordeal.  It has come as a great shock to ALL of us that our outgoing, social and fun-loving little girl hates and despises the thing she was so excited to love: daycare.

 I give her props for being consistent – I imagine it’s difficult to be absolute in your emotions when you are a dithering 2 year old.  Mia never wavers: she absolutely, consistently and dramatically LOATHES going to daycare. 

We send her to the same place that Toby went; it is a wonderful, loving and enriching atmosphere and she goes for 2 half mornings a week.  TWO HALF mornings.  As in a 4 hours stint.  TWICE in a week.  It’s like, 6.75% of her total week.  Nevertheless, it’s as if we send her off to an inexhaustible torture chamber the way she carries on at the slightest mention of it.

 The first few weeks we took it as a given; every kid cries initially when they start daycare.  By the third week we softened a bit and started to feel badly – Rob and I each started trying to get out of having to take her.  By this week even TOBY is heartbroken by her sad lamentations on daycare mornings.

This morning as soon as Rob opened the door to her room she burst into tears, “MIA DON’T WANT TO GO TO DAYCARE TODAY!!!”  The wailing continued for 20 minutes.  Rob tried to empathize and hug her tears away.  He tried distracting her with breakfast and exciting plans for the week ahead.  He tried encouraging her to be brave.  Finally he put his foot down and demanded that she stop wailing.

 Nothing worked.

Finally, about 20 min later, a distraction came in the form of a task.  Mia loves to be helpful so when I told her we had to go wake Toby up she perked up slightly.  When Rob told her she could jump on him to wake him up she even paused her dramatic sniffles to accompany me downstairs. 

Poor Toby was fast asleep when his despondent little sister accosted him with a giant full body jump.  NO one likes to be woken up – ESPECIALLY not Toby and ESPECIALLY not with a full body drop kick from his little sister.

“MIA!!! I’m not in the MOOD for you to JUMP on me yet!!!” he said with his eyes still closed and his pillow over his head.

Mia, as you can imagine, sat down and burst into tears.

I explained to Toby that Mia, although TRYING to be brave, was not happy about it being a daycare day.  He digested this for a moment before gallantly joining the family in our attempt to help her out.

“OK, Mia” he said with his pillow still over his head an his eyes still firmly shut, “I’m ready for you to jump on me, now!!!”  Through tears she accepted the challenge and immediately dove on top of him, quickly turning what would normally have been a competitive full-body flail into a comforting hug.  Toby lovingly reciprocated before throwing the pillow off of his eyes and graciously announcing ”Mia, look!  You woke me up!”  Mia actually GIGGLED at this and for a brief moment this morning all was right in our world.

The moment of happiness was fleeting; soon we had to get dressed, fed and have our teeth brushed with the eventual destination hanging over our heads like a gloomy cloud.  Mia cried through it all despite Toby’s further attempts to cheer her with stickers, promises and more hugs.   By the time we arrived at daycare even Toby was close to tears.

“Mommy…it makes me so sad to hear Mia crying!” he sniffled to me after we dropped her off.  It had been a hard morning for all of us.  By 8:15 am this morning I was an emotional mess myself, waffling somewhere between the pride I felt for my loving and giving son and the sadness and confusion I had for my poor lost little girl.

I certainly hope she gets used to daycare soon – for ALL of our sakes!