Best Daycare Stories of the Week

I haven’t written a thing in two weeks due to my most recent Illness of the Month installment. Working daycare for the first year comes with an automatic membership and this one was a whopper. This one was a cold from hell that turned into a sinus infection, turning me into a whiny, pathetic weakling. I’m still in recovery mode, but am back up for writing, and wanted to write about the daycare.

The best daycare stories this week were all “in jokes”.

To understand the first story, you have to know what a mommy huddle is. Co-worker Nicole taught us the mommy huddle. It is something that she developed with her foster daughter, who has Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) as a result of her severe abuse. RAD children have a whole series of symptoms that arise from not attaching correctly to their caretaker and/or from having trust broken. The idea is that children need to re-attach, and that you have to go back to infancy to do this. One of the ways of doing this is creating clear boundaries and making them stick. Sometimes all that is needed is a verbal redirect, but sometimes the kid has a major melt down, and that is where the mommy huddle comes in.

The mommy huddle is holding the child in such a way that they are immobilized with the gentlest hold possible. As the child pulls, we hold tighter, as they relax, we release the same amount. Sometimes we wrap them in a blanket if they need the extra support and/or if we need it to keep from getting bit or pinched. We let them know that we will let them up when they are ready, and when they say they are ready, we have them look at us and answer the question “who is the boss?” If they go back into melt down or won’t look us in the eye, we put them back into mommy huddle. Once they tell us that we are the boss we are done for that round and will do whatever the child needs—extra cuddling, reading a book to them, getting them a drink of water.

Dora, the just turned three-year-old who Jen is becoming a foster parent for, is one of the children that needs and receives the mommy huddle. She has made progress and currently ends up in fewer mommy huddles. It’s true that this is partly because we have become better at working with all the tools available, but there has been growth on her side too.

Thursday afternoon, Nicole, Jen and I were all trying to figure out scheduling for the next week. Nicole and Jen were in the office just off the kitchen while I was in the kitchen watching the kids and adding in my two cents from there. Suddenly I noticed that the floor wrestling that Dora and Carla (a much smaller, scrappy two-year old) were doing was starting to resemble a mommy huddle. As I watched, Dora sat Carla in her lap facing out, wrapped her arms around her and then crossed her leg over Carla’s. Since they both looked like they were having fun, I dashed into the office to call the others quickly out.

“Dora is putting Carla in a mommy huddle! Come see!” They caught the tail end just as Carla wiggled out the bottom and turned to face Dora, smiling. Jen laughed and said, “Carla, you just have to tell her that she’s the boss and then she’ll let you up.” Whereupon Carla yelled to Dora, “You’re the boss!” Dora’s face lit up and she glanced up at Jen, victory in her eyes. It lasted about two seconds before doubt crept in and she turned back to Carla and yelled, “No, you’re the boss!” We all had a good laugh at that.

For the next two stories you have to meet George. George just turned four and is working very hard on using his words instead of hitting. He is a mercurial, sensitive fellow and can go from happy to angry, hurt or frustrated in the blink of an eye. He lets you know it by crossing his arms, humping his shoulders, throwing out his bottom lip and saying “I’m mad at you, (your name here)”. Sometimes he doesn’t say anything, he just crosses his arms and “humphs” at you, pouting. He probably does this about ten times an hour, which is much better than the hitting ten times an hour that he had been doing.

Sammy, one of our precocious three-year-olds, is a very busy guy. He loves to be on the move, running through the garden, swinging on the ropes, finding good sticks to smack inanimate objects (and the occasional kid) with. He has an impish grin and a good-natured love of life that he tries to share with everyone, sometimes to excess; most of the time when he hurts another it is out of this exuberant joy of life and is completely unintentional.

I was talking to his mom one afternoon this week as she was picking him up when she had to redirect him. He crossed his arms, stuck out his bottom lip and “humphed” before running off to the toyroom. I laughed and said, “He got that from George!” She said she had wondered where he had picked that one up.

The final story involves Cathy, a chubby waif who is almost two and has claimed me as her own. Every morning when I arrive, her face lights up in a huge grin, she yells my name and comes toddling over to greet me, not an easy task since there are anywhere between two and four dogs also competing for my immediate attention when I arrive. Everyone knows that she will ask for me when injured or sad, and if I have to leave while she is there, she has to be held and consoled when I go.

She is also your typical two-year old (she’s an early starter) in that her favorite word is “no”. Her answer to almost everything is “no!” Sometimes it is just the usual two-year-old automatic response. Sometimes she can pack a lot of sassiness into the one word and we have to borrow from the RAD teachings and ask her who’s the boss.

I have taken to making sure I explain to her what I am doing next and being clear to help her with transitions. For example, if I am going to go back inside for something, and she is still playing with her eye on me, I will tell her that I am going in and that I will be right back. Or when I am holding her I will tell her that I am going to put her down so I can do the dishes, say, and she can play with the blocks while I do that. If I don’t do this she usually cries and I have found this to be a simple solution.

Thursday morning I had been picking Cathy up on and off while also playing with the other kids and sneaking in some house work. After picking her up and holding her yet another time, I told her that I was going to put her down and finish mopping the kitchen floor. “No” she told me.

“Cathy, I have to finish the floors so I am going to put you down,” I said again. “NO!” she said, at her sassiest. I told her yes and I put her down. Instead of dissolving into loud crying, she crossed her arms, pushed out her bottom lip and said something to me that wasn’t quite clear at first since her words are still a bit blurry around the edges. After a couple of seconds it dawned on me that she had actually said, “I’m mad at you, Nikki!” I slapped a hand over my face to muffle the bark of laughter that burst out of me. She did not just say that! I thought to myself and then just had to share the story with Jen so we could both have a good laugh.

And so ends yet another week at Jen’s Zen Bootcamp…..

InPeace, Nikki