Little Willow in Big Trouble.
Today is the last day of the pay period at work. So I was kind of pleased to be asked to stay an extra hour and a half. Gotta make those rent dollars.
Meanwhile my wonderful trio was on a field trip, across the harbor and into Wisconsin to see that State's largest waterfalls, Big Manitou Falls.
I was already having a rough day at work. My left foot was flaring and did I tell you the great news? My right foot now has Plantar Faciitis as well. So, painful, irritating day.
And I got a call from the Club. "We have had a behavioral incident with Little Willow, and since this is not the first time, we need her to go home. Are you able to pick her up so we can discuss things?"
Oh lord. What has she done now? About a month ago she tripped her brother (accidental) and when he fell onto her gym matt she hit him multiple times (purposeful) because she assumed he was trying to stop her matt from moving.
She also tried kicking a staff member on another day.
Little Willow is only 6. So she is bound to have bad days now and then. But gods dammit, we are NOT a violent household! I do not tolerate hitting, kicking, biting or violence of any kind in the kids or myself.
I'm so flummoxed. So I leave work early. Get on the bus and get there as quickly as possible.
It was time to leave, they stopped at a playground to let the kids run around for a while before heading back to the Club.
Little Willow was on a swing and refused to stop. The staff member graciously gave her one more minute, and then it was definitely time to go. All the other kids in the group were already heading back to the van.
She still refused. So the staff member grabbed her swing and brought it to a stop. My Little Willow then attempted to hit the staff member with the swing out of anger.
I can hear the explanations from some of you now. "Maybe she needs more time to transition?" And "Maybe she was tired?"
She had no trouble transitioning during Kindergarten last year. She has no issues with it at home, either. And she always wants to run home and play at the park after Club.
She is acting out, and it cannot continue.
Tonight she will be writing an apology to the staff member. She will give it to her after work tomorrow because she will be coming to work with me for the next few days. Maybe being bored out of her mind will remind her that the Club is a better place to be than work with her Mama all day.
She's cute as a button and sweet as pie most days. Hopefully the measures I am taking will put that attitude back in check.
Perhaps there are issues with the club - or that your daughter doesn't fit in somehow. It feels like we've been through this ... in our case, it got particularly bad as the kinder garden refused to even consider that it could be problems in the kinder garden, they decided it must all be due to problems at home and filed a report with the CPS.
All our three children are a bit introvert and sensitive, that may be some of the reason for the troubles. Also, I notice on both my sons that if they don't get to eat enough, they easily get in a very bad mood. Well, that applies to us adults also sometimes. Our children are also very picky on what they eat, this is a very bad combination sometimes.
I was very happy with our kinder garden, everything appeared right and the staff was friendly. Well, eventually there were some tensions between our son and the staff, and it grew only worse as our son started acting violently, and apparently the staff handled it in ways that only escalated the conflicts. Well, what can one do ... it's a very difficult situation. My wife was very active, both in negotiations with the kinder garden and with getting help from the municipality to look into the situation at the kinder garden. The kinder garden got some advises on how to handle our son, and eventually the situation improved.
Eventually he started in school. The conversations with the teacher was always "nice", he told us about all the positive things and never touched the negative things - but I'm quite sure there are a lot of things that weren't told. There are some hours between the school day ends and the work day ends, there are some activities on the school and they are supposed to get food there, but the food budget is ridiculously low. Three days a week they would get dried bread. We know he doesn't eat dried bread and we know he has a tendency to become difficult when he doesn't eat anything - but it took half a year until we learned that he would sit and eat nothing while the others were eating this crispy bread three days in a week, and that he also tended to become difficult and aggressive both during and after those meals!
We've also had two kids that did not talk in the kinder garden. That was very frustrating. One of them was going in the same kinder garden as above, but at a different team. She was speaking in the same kinder garden prior to being moved to the "big children team" at age 3. It appears the problems were too much noise, too many other children, and a very unstable staff situation at that team (at the small-children team she got a good relationship with one out of three employees there. She was quite unhappy if this employee was away). It appeared the only solution was to change kinder garden. Now we have logistical problems every day, but at least our daughter is blossoming in the kinder garden and talking a lot!
Jeez that sounds like a nightmare. 😱
When Inari was in care he had some issues with a particular staff member. They had set up a "rewards system" and he came home crying several times because he kept trying his hardest to "go above and beyond" but he was never recognized as such. They broke his little toddler heart.
Sparrow is very shy and does not talk much at school either. She made friends with the other quiet kids and was able to do well. I'm hoping for similar at the new school this year.
Willow though... She just gets frustrated. I think maybe people are treating her as a child younger than she is because she's tiny. Which would be frustrating for anyone.
Kids go through so much and some adults just expect them to obey without question. Most people naturally push back against that.
My eldest son is a good example on that; any attempt on pushing him (either by me or the teacher) would most likely backfire. In his last years on the children school (age 12-13) he had a teacher with a very sensitive nose. She would insist very much that the children should shower often. That backfired so much with my son, he would simply reject showering for weeks! He rarely did his homework as well, and if he was just had a little bit of a cough, he would claim that he was too ill to go to school, sometimes for as much as two weeks. No surprise, we had to go to more meetings with the CPS due to that ...
At age 13-14, the children change school. The daughter of a friend of my wife was going to the same class on the old school, and continued in another class at the new school, she commented that our son had become like a new person after ... "getting away from that which". All problems disappeared, CPS closed the case. I considered that teacher to be a nice, friendly and joyful person ... not a "which" ... but then again, I never experienced her in the classroom. My son even refused to participate in the end-of-school-event for teachers, parents and children - it was horrible, we went there but our son stayed at home - it was a very sad experience for me. Later we were invited to some event at school, and my eldest son said that he would only join if we could guarantee that he would not have to meet his former teacher. So he stayed at home.
And today, we got the phone call from the after-school activities that our 7yrs old was violent against other children :-( Perhaps I didn't pack enough food for him.
Oh, so sorry. I hope it gets straightened out. And your feet feel better, too! Eek. What does she say when you talk to her about it? Nothing suspicious like her being picked on by other kids so she's trying to get a reputation for being badass or something?