Rya's back!

Since I’ve received some concerned responses about how Rya is doing at daycare, I thought I’d share a positive update!

As you know, the first couple of weeks were really tough on her (and me!).  Rya's normally such a happy, energetic little girl, so it was really hard for me to see her being sad at school and worried at home each day about the next.  Rya started to give us signs that she was maybe starting to enjoy small parts of her day (singing circle time songs like B-I-N-G-O loudly each evening), but apparently she was good at hiding her voice since the teachers barely knew she could speak.

But low and behold, at the end of her third week, Rya finally started to come out of her delicate little shell.  She bonded with a very nice teacher at school, named Ms. Agnes, who I think is quite fond of Rya too.  Up until this point, Rya had been holding tightly to Ms. Agnes’ hand each day in the playground when I came to pick her up, but by last week she finally started to show a bit of independence.  Some days I would pull up and see her sitting on a bench next to Ms. Agnes, then walking near Ms. Agnes, and now I am happy to say that I pull up and can’t find Rya since she’s finally busy playing with the other kids.  Ms. Agnes has been meeting me at the fence each day with better and better news about Rya’s adjustment.  At first, Ms. Agnes was happy to report that she discovered Rya is a hard little worker who would take the initiative to help her tuck in chairs, erase the board, or clean up the desks.  The next day, Ms. Agnes told me that Rya no longer followed her around, but that Ms. Agnes had to start following Rya around to keep track of her.  Once Ms. Agnes asked me who 'Yaya' is, since in her country Yaya means big sister and Rya always seems to be talking about her (e.g. drawing pictures and saying 'one daddy, one mommy, one baby, one Yaya').  I had to laugh when I told her that Yaya is herself...Rya just can't pronounce her R's as yet : )  She says Rya is learning the routine very quickly and makes sure she follows it to a T.  Rya has learned that I pick her up around 4:30 each day when the class is outside, so she insists on wearing her jacket regardless of the temperature.  One 28 degree day I purposely sent her without one and she took it upon herself to steal a 4 year-old classmate’s sweater, which she wore loosely and threatened to tantrum if I removed it (so I shamefully whispered to Ms. Agnes that I was afraid to challenge Rya but assured her it would return the next day!).  Rya adores Ms. Agnes so much that she can often be found pretending to be her at home.  Sometimes I catch her singing ‘follow me outside’ and walking backwards gesturing her hands toward her, the way Ms. Agnes probably leads the kids to the playground.  I suppose Rya likes her teacher so much, that she’s forgotten about the age difference since yesterday Ms. Agnes told me that Rya calls all the other teachers Ms. So and so, but thinks she’s on a first name basis with ‘Agnes’!

My little pumpkin still struggles with feeling a bit nervous now and then, but I’ve been working hard to incorporate therapy sessions into our daily drives too and from school : )  I’ve gotten her to practice positive self-talk like “mommy will always come get me” and “it’s okay to cry little bit” out loud, to the point that she now states them to me on her own.  She even started normalizing with others, like asking her teacher daddy ‘you get shy at school too?’ and asking a tiny classmate ‘you miss your mommy?’. 

Rya’s adjustment has fit in very nicely with my return back to work from summer holidays.  I started back on Monday and it was the very first day that she walked into the classroom with a smile on her face, rather than the usual clinging and crying.  We even have a ‘secret code’ at the window where I wave goodbye to her and we share a thumbs up to assure each other that everything’s going to be okay : )