21 Sep Sitting quietly on the floor

Henry loves his daycare, but lately we’ve struggled with getting him there in the morning because he wants to stay home with us instead.

This morning I called his bluff and said fine, he didn’t have to go, but we had to get to work. For a good 20 minutes he sat on the floor in our office naked while we replied to emails. He just sat there because I sternly told him he couldn’t play or talk or do anything fun if he was going to stay home, and the couple of times he said “I’m going to help you work,” and got out a piece of paper and a marker or something, I told him no, he had to just sit there and do nothing if he was staying home. And he was butt naked because he refused to get dressed for school.

He was fully prepared to just sit there quietly all day. Poor kid.

Finally, hearts breaking for this naked kid just sitting there silently, we told him we needed to go to meetings so he had to go to school. Several cuddles and lots of tears and protests later, he’s on his way.

I’ve said it a million times, but the working mother’s dilemma is such a hard one. I miss him all day too and wish we could just play and cuddle all the time.

But we’ve got obligations. Clients to take care of, bills to pay.

So many times I see posts on Facebook that say things like, forget your sleep training, or forget your time outs — go to your kid when he’s crying and just be with him. That he’s little and he won’t always need you. To enjoy the moments and take every cuddle you can.

I try that; to remember that he’s only little once, and that if he needs me, he needs me. When he asks for a cuddle, I never say no. There’s plenty of time to learn independence, and I do believe he’ll be better at independence if he’s confident and knows how loved he is.

But there has to be a line… I just don’t know where it is.

And I don’t know if things are amped up because of the baby coming. I want to give him all the individual attention I can, before things change forever. This morning I don’t actually have any meetings until 11:30. I can stay up late to bang out work if I need to, though my brain doesn’t work as well at night.

Things ended well today. Cory said drop-off was easy. He was all smiles. But thinking of him just sitting on our office floor doing nothing because he wants to be with us that badly — I’m just having a heartbroken kind of morning.

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