For the past week or so, we've been picking up Anna and Ryan from daycare and with fear in our hearts, ask the question: How was Anna today?
For some reason, Anna has been especially mean for the past several days. I'm not exactly sure why, but she started hitting, pushing and being just plain mean to the other kids at daycare. They had to separate her from the other children and I was told the other children were afraid of her.
Now this is something that is unpleasant for a parent to hear. But more than that, it breaks your heart. Why is my child acting this way? Sure we've always had the daily skirmishes, but Anna wasn't a bully. Or is she? What have we done or what haven't we done to prevent this? And of course, the big question that looms is: could this be because of her background and might this be the beginning of a future pattern?
Truth be told, during the week, we have very little time to spend with our children. We start our day at 5:30am, I wake up my kids around 6:30am and rush around until we are out the door at 7:15am - you know the drill. And then we pick them up around 5pm, and rush around and get them ready for bed at 7-8pm. Again, you know the drill.
So for the past week or so, I've been trying to spend some special, quality time with Anna before she goes to bed and whenever I can steal a moment. We do the traditional "nice nice" with me tenderly rubbing her cheek or her arm or tummy. Then we have her do nice nice to me. Then we repeat with Ryan, and so on and so forth. I've been taking time to cuddle her, read to her and sing to her.
And lo and behold, it worked!
Knock on wood.
On Friday afternoon, I picked up Anna and Ryan, asked how they were and received a glowing report. My happy Anna has returned!
Today is Saturday morning and we may just stay home, try to stay healthy and white-eyed (we've had colds and pink-eye) and repeat over and over: nice, nice.....nice, nice.....nice nice.
