Daycare woes

So we’ve had this issue recently at daycare- not a huge deal, but concerning.
There is a little girl in Maddie’s class named Kennedy. She’s a sweetie, they’ve been in class together for quite some time, but she can be a bit of a “boar.” I wouldn’t say bully, but she is an “in your face” kind of girl. We’ve had a few biting incidents, but mostly I wonder if that was influenced by the other main “biter” in class who is now no longer in class (yay!!!) Anyway, biting aside, she is very much an in your face sort of child.

So two weeks ago- the Friday before 4th of July weekend, I brought Maddie into her room in the morning and as always, Kennedy was already there and Maddie and I sat down to read a book. Kennedy often will come to see or hear the book we read, but she was very forceful about trying to sit on my lap. I patted a pillow and said “no, you sit here Kennedy” and Maddie was getting visibly upset. Kennedy, who had already said “MY BALL!” when we walked in the room and “MY BOOK” when I said Maddie and I were going to read a book, started saying “MY MAMA!!!” several times. The teacher pulled her away at this point and sat her on her lap. Well, that entire weekend Maddie kept bringing this up and saying “No Kennedy Mama. Kennedy Mama?”- in a very anxious sort of way. We talked a lot about “Only Maddie’s Mama”, and tried to go through “Who are the people in our family? Mama, Baba, Maddie.” A few times she added “Kennedy and laughed and said “Kennedy Mama”. This was NOT her joking about it, this was her testing. To explain it this way, it sounds like she’s joking about it, but it was not. I know my child and this is her testing to see what my reaction will be.

On Tuesday last week Maddie was sick, so on Wednesday when we came to daycare, I asked the assistant director if we could drop off in another room that week so we wouldn’t have the Kennedy interaction- he said it would be fine. I saw Kennedy a few times and it wasn’t until Friday when I was there to pick Maddie up that Kennedy looked at me again and said “My Mama!”- I tried to cover it and say “Yeah, Kennedy’s Mama is coming soon”, but Maddie STILL was bringing it up a bunch this weekend- “no Kennedy Mama”- so this weekend when she brought it up, we went through the “who is in our family” and “who is whose Mama” games again. “What’s Kennedy’s Mama’s name?” (she knows it.) What’s your mama’s name? (she knows it.)

So this morning, I decided that we would read a book in her room before going to the morning drop off room. This way we would minimize the time that I’m in the room with she and Kennedy. Happy happy, fun times, good books. Well I go to drop her off in the drop off room and I was in there not 2 minutes before Kennedy said “My Mama! My Mama!” and it wasn’t once, but 3 or 4 times right in a row. The Teacher started gently correcting her and saying “no, that’s Maddie’s Mama…” but she kept saying loudly “My Mama!” Maddie totally got the deer in the headlights look and stonefaced, so I grabbed her and took her quickly to the hallway and said, “who’s Mama am I?” and she said “Maddie”- “that’s right, I’m Maddie’s Mama. Not Kennedy’s Mama.” “No Kennedy Mama”. Then talked for a few minutes about what we’d do after school (to try to get her thinking about something else), and I gave her a hug and a kiss bye bye in the hallway, and brought her into the room and said bye and left quickly.

The teacher was trying, she REALLY was. I don’t fault the teacher. We just need to find a solution to this. I stopped on the way out to talk to the assistant director (director is out for the week) and he said “maybe we can ask the teacher to make sure Kennedy is engaged in some activity”- I said that didn’t help because she is the ONLY one in the room in the morning, and as soon as Maddie comes she is very aware that Maddie is there.

Because this has happened 3 times now, I decided it was maybe time to talk with her Mom about it. We work together and I told the assistant director that I was going to mention it to Kennedy’s Mom. I explained and she said “Well that’s Kennedy, she takes ownership of everything”, and then she said that unless she did it in front of her, she couldn’t discipline her. I tried to explain, “no, it’s not discipline, but maybe you could talk about who is in your family, whose mama is who, etc….” She said again, “Well unless she does it in front of me there isn’t anything I can do…” UGH!!! Really?? You cannot control what your child says, but if someone is telling you that on a regular basis your child is claiming THEM as “my mama” (she said “she knows who her Mama is”), then you might consider talking about WHO their Mama is and WHO is NOT their Mama. It’s like saying “I didn’t see my kid hit that other kid, I’m not going to talk to them about it.” If another parent said to me “hey Maddie always wants to hug me when I am at daycare and it makes me uncomfortable”, you BET that we would start talking about “who do you hug” and “who do you wave to”, etc. But no. This parent is choosing not to care or do anything and saying “Oh Kennedy, that’s just the way she is.” Oh yeah, that’s healthy.