Separation Anxiety . . .

It'll be almost a month of schooling for Kaila and yet she still has this "separation anxiety" problem. We've tried almost every trick to convince her that being alone inside the classroom is ok and yet she would still cry every time yaya will go out of the room.

As far as I can remember, during her first week of school yaya was already out of the classroom. There was just one day when yaya called me and told me that Kaila was crying inside. I asked her what happened and she said she don't know. Kaila just cried. Knowing Kaila, I asked her what they were doing. That time they were listening to a story over the radio. I can even hear it over the phone. I further asked their other activities and nothing unusual according to the yaya. I tried to talk to Kaila over the phone but she was really crying. Since it was 3pm already, I just told yaya to finish the class since they'll be out in 30 minutes. I told hubby what happened and our initial assessment was that Kaila was afraid of the voice over the radio. Kaila has this thing, wherein she would just cry every time this certain commercial is aired over the t.v. As in she would cry out loud! When we got home, we found out that they also had an art activity wherein they did a puppet butterfly. My gosh! Kaila is afraid of butterflies! Why? I really don't know. When we talked to Kaila why she cried she just told us about the butterfly and the story over the radio. So I guess we had the correct assessment.

The next day, they don't have classes because it was Rizal day and it's a non-working holiday in Laguna. I reported to work that day because we switched the holiday to Friday so that it'll be a long weekend for us. I was happy because I can go with Kaila to school. So after the crying incident on Wednesday, it was just this day that she'll be going to school again. When we arrived in school, Kaila immediately cried and doesn't want to go inside. So teacher Liza told me to go inside first. There were also a few yayas and moms inside. Again, I took the opportunity to take pictures. When inside the classroom, Kaila would participate and answer during their activities. It's no problem with her as long as I am inside the classroom. Since Friday was PE day, they went out of their classroom to play outside. Just when they were about to go out Kaila was already calling me. I just told her that they'll go out to play. She was about to cry so I told her that mommy will be going out as well. She was playing with the kids but she's not the type who would ran around where the ball goes to unlike the other kids who was really running over the place. So, after their activity they just went inside to freshen up before they were dismissed.

On the second week, teacher Liza told the moms and the yayas that we won't be allowed inside the room anymore. So, we were trying to "condition" Kaila on the new set-up. Come Monday, I immediately called yaya to ask where she is. According to her, Kaila cried so she went inside. The following day, the 4 kids had a special session with teacher Liza on a separate room. They had the same activities as the other kids so the only difference is that there were only four of them inside the room. Teacher Liza told Mommy Charisse that they'll try this set-up first cause the kids might be overwhelmed by the number of kids inside the regular classroom. This continued until Friday before their PE activity. The "crying kids" needs to join the rest of the class for their Friday activity. They joined their class but the yaya went inside again.

Last week, they already tried leaving Kaila inside the room alone. Yaya was with her on the first 30 minutes then she would sneak out afterwards. Kaila will cry for a while but eventually she will stop. This went on the whole week of last week. We thought that this will improve this week since she was already progressing. As of today, she would still cry at the start of the class and of course she'll stop eventually.

Hubby and I are already stressed everytime the yaya would inform us that Kaila is crying in class. Disappointed? A bit. But of course Kaila is just a three year old kid. I think it's still normal for her age to behave that way. As I said to hubby, I would have been mad if Kaila is already at the age of 5 or 6 and she's still behaving that way. I'm still hopeful that in time Kaila will outgrow this separation anxiety thing.

For the moms out there, do you have any proven tips or tricks on this type of problem? Please share with me your thoughts on this. All suggestions will be highly appreciated.