Apparently Mitchell's past successes in Nursery were some sort of fluke. He hates that place. The last few weeks he's gotten upset when we start to head in that direction, and starts crying hysterically when it looks like we might leave him there. So we worked out a little system where Lee stays with him one hour, and I stay with him one hour, and we kind of sit quietly and pretend we're not there. Last week I even tried sneaking out, holy screaming child! As a result of my little sneaking out incident, he now loathes Nursery even more. Today the hysterical crying began well before the doorway, we had to drag him in there sobbing. He wouldn't let either one of us leave, and continued to cry inconsolably for a good 10 minutes. He just kept saying, 'Go' and trying to get us to the door. Eventually after a little candy and the promise of some Playdoh time he calmed down and played a little. He'd glance up every so often to make sure we were both still there. After an hour I was able to sneak out so I could say the opening prayer in Relief Society. The Nursery lady is very nice and plays with him very well, but the fact of the matter is, he's the only kid in there. There is nothing to distract him from the fact that his parents have abandoned him. So it looks like Lee and I have to repeat Nursery, and unless we move in the next few years, we'll be repeating Primary as well.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
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8 comments:
Man, that's rough. Here's an idea: some friends of ours went through the same thing. They decided to stop giving their kid snacks during sacrament meeting so that he was hungry by the time nursery rolled around. Then they called nursery "snack time." Hooray, we get to go to snack time now! Worked like a charm. Of course, every kid is different... :)
that's hard and amazing that he's the only kid in there. we've always had at least two nurseries in our various wards. it's usually the other kids that get my kids to sweeten up to the idea of us ditching them.
one suggestion i've heard is to have the teacher come to your house and get to be more of a known buddy. good luck putting up with it til he finally likes it.
also, the primary handbook says nursery is OPTIONAL. so, you can just take a few weeks or months off whenever you want! he won't fall behind or be less-active ;)
And it was going so well! Sorry friend. It's a whole new world with being the only kid. Good luck!
p.s. I'm beginning to be concerned that you may have stage 3 memory loss..."Pope Joan" was one of the books I reviewed on my blog ages ago. But I appreciate the fact that you are looking out for good reads for me. You're a good friend, if a forgetful one! (I felt the need to post something about certain memories from High School, but the blogging world is too small now and journal entries from back then can no longer be publicly mocked. Lucky you.)
I am sorry to hear that Mithcell doesn't like the nursery and I have no gems of advice - but it sounds like your other friends have some good ideas. I suppose bribing him with "cukas" might be a possibility - just to get him in there. Or diet Pepsi.
I would have suggestions for you but with no other kids in there it makes it hard for him to even consider wanting to go alone! Hmmm, I will have to think about it.
Usually I would just say let him scream and he will eventually stop crying at some point because he will want to join in on the fun...but if there is no 'fun'...
Christian cried for 2 hours each sunday for a month and when he realized that I wasn't going to let his parents (or grandparents) sit in there with him then he just decided that it would be more fun to play. Tough love. I was such a mean nursery leader!
Hang in there. Sounds like you've already gotten some good advice. Hope something works. That could be your new calling, a nursery leader, then a Sunbeam teacher and so on, but I think that might create a whole new set of problems later. Cute pumpkin painting by the way.
its probably the people who WORK in nursery. lol
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