This article is aimed to address the under-discussed very real issue of separation anxiety that many stay-at-home-moms go through when their toddler begins preschool. There are many wonderful articles written on the topic of helping the toddler adjust, or aimed at helping a working mom transition from babysitters to preschool, but not a lot of very helpful information for the SAHM with no other young children in the house. I'd like to open a dialogue on the topic and share my own story as well as invite you to comment on yours.
I wasn't just any SAHM, I was very VERY over-attached to my premie 2.5 year old son when we discovered that he had delayed speech and social skills and were told that he should be enrolled in an education-geared early-preschool program. Prior to this moment, I was already debating on whether we would even enroll him into pre-school at all and had begun researching into the possibility of home-schooling. I was devastated. I felt so guilty for not having socialized him in some sort of play group. I felt even more guilty for having forced an unhealthy attachment with him and knew that it would be just as hard on him as it would be on me.
Neither he, nor I, do well with abrupt changes to our schedules so I knew that this new full-time preschool routine would have to be developed gradually. For whatever reason, I decided on a 30 day deadline to get us both ready for all of the new adjustments we would have to be making, especially with our very liberal sleeping and meal routine.
The very first thing we needed to tackle was our nap and sleeping schedule. I had already received the schedule from his pre-school and set out to get us prepared for it. This was no harder than any other parent's struggle to get their children on a reasonable schedule, except that we had been way too passive in making him sleep in his bed at a decent time. This alone took about 1 week of screaming and sleepless nights to get his wake-nap-bedtime routine into better shape. Of course there are still always ups and downs with illnesses and activities, but once we set more regular meal and snack times, a loose resemblance of a schedule sort of fell into place.
Getting him to nap and sleep alone on a schedule also helped to deal with the next issue at hand, separation anxiety. We were so close that I took him everywhere with me, including into the bathroom when I showered, to my my mental health counselor, and even my OBGYN. My counselor once pointed out to me that I was treating him very much like an anxiety comfort dog!
I knew that I had curated an unhealthy attachment with him and that it would cause him a lot of trauma if I didn't help ease him (and myself) into spending time apart. His daddy worked full-time days but had every evening and weekend off, so with his help we started to create more separation over the following few weeks. I spending a little more time away from him in the evenings and leaving him with his dad to go grocery shopping. It was really hard at first. The first time I had left him home to go to a store without him, I cried the whole drive and rushed home in a panic. Eventually it got a little easier, and I felt the benefit of having a little time to myself, and giving him more time to play with his dad without me trying to micro-manage their play time.
When we approached his official start day, I had already informed the day care that we would start with just an hour a day for the first week, then 2 hours the second week, and continue to gradually increase his stays until we worked up to the current schedule of four, 6-hour days a week. The entire ordeal of getting him used to being left there and getting me (and his dad) used to being able to just drop him off and rush off with him screaming will have to wait for another day. Let's just say, that even with my attempt to make things easier on us all, it was still a nightmare worst-case-scenario story full of screaming, pleading, and tears for us all. I could only imagine how much worse it would have been for everyone if we hadn't started making the adjustments early.
Well, I cannot believe it has only been 3 months now. He has grown and developed so much since he first started. He still doesn't like bedtime, and really hates waking up early, but now he actually gets excited about grabbing his backpack (of ninja turtles and dinosaurs) and heading off to school. He's talking a LOT and has become so sociable and outgoing. Our next milestone is to work on potty-training so that he can graduate from early-head-start and enter the preschool program.
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