Nursery Trauma...I mean, Drama

I wrote this a little while back but thought it would still be a good update to post. Thanks to everyone who has checked on us through this process!

We left Boston when Claire was 18 months old, which was a fun age in many ways but proved to be difficult regarding life transitions. It's one of the regularly-scheduled age markers for separation anxiety, which, coupled with moving, caused us quite a bit of difficulty when visiting churches in Durham.

I've written about our struggle to find a church for over a year, but I didn't really touch on how big a factor Claire's nursery anxiety ended up being in that process. Very early in the visiting process, we discovered that Claire could not tolerate being left. Let me explain: we're not the hovering kind of parents who stick around too long trying to comfort her when she shows signs of anxiety at drop-off. We're pretty good about dropping her off and trusting the nursery workers that "they all calm down. It will be fine." It was basically never fine, though. Almost every church we visited ended up paging us/texting us/finding us to come get Claire. She would work herself up to the point of being sick and hysterical. She wasn't behaving badly or ugly or anything, but she was making herself sick and upsetting the other children with her panic. 

So, I would end up spending half, if not the majority, of the service holding Claire or walking around with her or just sitting outside the sanctuary while she tried to calm down. There were many churches where I didn't hear most of what the pastor taught (hard to form too much of an opinion about a church when you don't hear all of the teaching). Sometimes, we tried her out in the service. In general, she's a fairly quiet church child, but she's also really young, so she definitely wasn't super quiet. It became a stressful venture for me to make sure I had plenty of snacks and *quiet* diversions packed for her. Rather than spending the service walking the halls with her and not hearing the pastor, I would end up sitting in the service, supplying her with a steady stream of stickers/crayons/books/cars/snacks and not hearing the pastor. Either way, I usually left the service drained, tired, and frustrated while Brad tried to catch me up on what he took away from the service.

It was very disheartening, and we couldn't really figure out what to do. We figured out that the constant changing of churches was causing her more stress; seeing a different nursery with different faces every week added to her feelings of insecurity. Keeping her in the service with us kept her from learning how to navigate a nursery and to trust that we would come back from her. We just could not reach a happy medium.

When we decided to make Blacknall our church home, we knew we were going to have to put in some work to get her adjusted and let her know that this is how we do things and everything will be fine. What this looked like was a LOT of tears for several weeks. We got paged on many occasions and had to spend quite a lot of time slowly backing out of the rooms as very patient nursery volunteers worked hard to distract her. We really lucked out with the Blacknall nursery, though; their people are very committed to doing what it takes to allow parents to worship uninterrupted, and they are very creative in how to manage very upset children. A couple of times, the ladies manning the front desk at the nursery would bring a sobbing, upset Claire out front to calm down in a quieter area. They would hold her in their laps or let her roll a ball in the entry area, and this actually worked really well for her. 

Once my morning sickness calmed down enough for me to participate in the Thursday morning Women's Bible Study, I started brainstorming how to tackle putting her in childcare so that I could really benefit from my time. I came up with a plan: I would tell her before we got there that, if she would stay calm and wait for Mommy, she could have chocolate when we got in the car to go home. This is a big treat around here, as we still limit her sugar quite a lot. I also promised that she could watch Cars when we got home. We don't watch full-length movies outside of special occasions, so this was exciting incentive. To reinforce these prizes, we started reciting a catechism of sorts. It went a little something like this:
Q: What do you get if you stay calm at church?
A: Chocolate! I get to watch Lightening McQueen!

Q: Where will Mommy be?
A: Mommy will be upstairs with friends, and Claire will be downstairs with friends.

Q: What will Mommy do?
A: Mommy will come back for me...and then I get CHOCOLATE AND LIGHTENING MCQUEEN!

We went through this catechism countless times. 

When our first day of going to Bible study arrived, I was a big ball of nerves, worried about Claire and how she would react. I was working really hard to keep my anxiety at bay so that she wouldn't sense it and become anxious herself. At drop-off, she started sniffling and her chin started trembling, but we went through our catechism again, and she summoned her courage and walked over to play with some toys. 

I tried so hard not to watch my nursery pager like a hawk the whole time. I just knew that they were going to page me to come collect my inconsolable child. 

BUT THEY DIDN'T.

When I went to pick her up, she was not crying. She ran over to me, squealing, "Mommy! I get CHOCOLATE and LIGHTENING MCQUEEN!" Apparently, she was, in fact, able to hold it together and stay calm. It was a nursery miracle! 

She got everything I'd promised her, and shockingly, she decided that she liked church. :) We immediately started talking about how we would do the same thing next time...and we continued talking about it for the next week. The next week was kind of a bust, but it wasn't her fault; she actually ended up starting a stomach bug while in the nursery, causing us to leave early, and who wouldn't be upset by that? However, after that hiccup, she has gotten progressively more confident. She thinks playing in the nursery is fun now, and she trusts that we will always come back for her (she told the workers one time that her mommy "will be back in fifteen minutes!"). She still occasionally gets treats, but we've been cutting back on all the incentives, as that's not exactly sustainable long term. 

It continually gets better and better. We've progressed to the point of Claire asking- regularly- if we can go to church. In fact, a few weeks before Lily was born, I woke up after a night fighting a migraine and just did NOT feel like getting up and going to Thursday morning Bible study. However, Claire woke up and BEGGED me to please go to church. I could not say "no." I just couldn't. So, I loaded up on medication (still safe to drive, no worries) and Diet Coke (GAG. I hate diet, but I couldn't drink regular while diabetic.), and we headed off to Bible study. I'm so glad we went, even though I ended up leaving a little earlier than usual...which caused Claire to CRY because she didn't want to leave. She has become a completely different child.

And man. It has been a little bit life-changing, I have to say. Thankfully the prayers of family and friends + the promise of chocolate and Lightening McQueen eased our process of incorporating nursery into our life and has been a huge blessing for us as we continue to make Durham and Blacknall our home. For those of you who are nursery volunteers at your churches, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your commitment and perseverance. It's unbelievable how much of a difference it can make. Let me know that you work in the nursery, and I'll give you chocolate.