After yet another traumatic pre-school drop off experience (she started whimpering when she saw the building and flew from the stroller into my arms once in the lobby. The whimper developed into a full fledged scream when I suggested she play with her friends and I ended up leaving with her still crying in the arms of the teacher), I contemplated:
1) taking her out of school and just keeping her home, joining the many homeschooling families all over the world.
2) having baba-san drop her off as I find it too hard to see her little face. I keep having flashbacks to the day we got her and how she screamed out in terror and anger for her caretaker.
3) re-allocating her savings and putting more into the "therapy fund" as all of this is probably traumatising her for life (see point #2 - forget about my flashbacks, I'm more worried about hers).
You see, with an adopted child, it is very difficult to determine what is just normal everyday separation anxiety and what is adoption related trauma. And for adoptive parents, that is the big dilemma. How do you know? For every instance of "adopted child" behavior I read about in all of the books, there was an example of the same behavior seen in my friend's "home grown" children.
In this instance, is the separation from me too traumatic for her - saying "goodbye" is getting worse every time; or, is her behavior normal for any child who is being separated from her mother for the first time?
As it turns out, she did stop crying. She played. She danced around and was apparently sharing kisses with another little girl (not that there's anything wrong with theat), she built a very tall Lego tower, and ate a little bit of her pasta and many cheese balls (round little balls of cheese individually wrapped and found in most grocery stores. She likes the plain ones, but they also have ones that taste like little bits of cheesecake - yummy!!!).
When I picked her up, she was a little whimpery when she saw me, but was quite talkative and said goodbye to everyone. So, we will continue going to school..........
.............and putting a little money into the "therapy fund", just in case.
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2 comments:
My friend's son screamed every day when he was dropped off at pre-school. He was not adopted. He is now a millionaire as a clothing designer with stores in NY, BH, Malibu , Las Vegas and West Hollywood . He is also in therapy. And a really nice, happy guy.
There, hope this makes you feel better!
Love and hugs,
Judy
Thank you. It does make me feel better. And given she was a perfect example of a whiny, screamy child on the subway home today, I will drop her off on Tuesday just slightly less sympathetic!!!!
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