My 3 year old has been going to the same daycare since she was 8 weeks old. Most days when I drop her off she is very excited to go in, but then as soon as we get to the door she doesn't want to step foot in the classroom. HELP!!! Any suggestions on something I can do to make her not throw a tantrum everytime I leave? The Teachers say she is absolutely fine the rest of the day...it's just those few minutes when I'm leaving.
I agree with the other response. My daughter only gets upset if she actually SEES me leave. If she gets interested in a toy or watching something in the room, I sneak out! Or sometimes one of the ladies will take her and entertain her while I leave. There's something with actually seeing mommy leave that's upsetting.
I have had a in home child care business for 11 years, most all children go through this to some degree at several stages of their life. If the child is old enough explain to them that there is no choice you have to go and reasure them you or some one else (dad, granny , pa...) will be back to pck them up shortly. They get over it before you get to the car. I always welcome a call from mom checking up on them after they have left, so if there is really somthing wrong we can talk about it not in front of the child. Hanging around or coming back time after time only encourages the crying.
Hi M.,
Has your child recently moved up to a new class inside the daycare? My 19 month old son has also started to have seperation anxiety when we drop him off in the morning. He just moved up to new class with new teachers. The teachers say it only lasts a few minutes, but it still makes it that much harder to leave. What has started to work for us is getting the teacher to distract him, whether it be with a toy or looking outside, so I can sneek out. It seems to be easier for him if he doesn't actually see me leave.
Hope this helps.
I just went through this about 6 weeks ago. But my problem was that my child had never attended daycare.What we did was explain to him every morning that he was a big boy and needed to go to "school" and his teacher would have talks with him about it too. I'd drop him off and kiss him and turn around and leave while he was crying. He eventually learned that his crying and tantrums weren't working.And one day he just didn't start crying when I dropped him off! He's been so good since then. You just can't turn around and try to calm your child down, you have to find the strength to leave so that you are teaching them that crying isn't helping anything. It hurts believe me, it was the hardest thing I have ever done but after about the 4th week of crying I was just tired of it and I think he could sense that! Hang in there, sometimes it takes tough love to accomplish things. You could also try talking to the teacher see if she could meet you outside the daycare, so when you drive up it would be your child leaving you instead of you leaving your child. I know a couple of daycares in my area do this and it works wonderfully.
Good Luck!
