James, my older son, doesn't seem to handle transitions very well unless he has enough warning and is prepared for what will be happening next. This applies to many activities: leaving the park, getting ready for bed, going grocery shopping, etc. Most of this is probably typical of being a two year old.
The hardest lately has been Sunday school at church. At our church, the classrooms are broken down by age groups (except for the infants which are broken down by walkers or non-walkers). Every six months there is a promotion weekend where children are moved up into their next classroom if they have already turned the appropriate age. James was moved up from the walkers room to the two year old room at the last promotion.
When we drop James off at his class, he is crying and clinging to Daddy. Then according to the workers in his classroom, he settles down; however, each time the class transitions, James has a mini meltdown and needs someone to hold him for a little bit. I can see this happening because the same thing can happen at home if I do not prepare James well for a switch in activities. Also this is so unlike the walkers room because there wasn't much structure in the walkers room...mainly just free play. Now James has open play, story time, music time, arts & crafts, snack and outdoor play in a much more structured environment.
I know it will probably just take a little more time for James to adjust to his new class. The same thing happened when he moved from the nursery room to the walkers room...it took him a few weeks to settle into the rhythm, so to speak. It is just so hard in the meantime to have James start saying "no church" when we pull into the parking lot and to see him melt down when he gets dropped off.
I know the Sunday school workers will page us if he doesn't settle down and needs a parent to come calm him down, so that helps put me a little at ease, but it is still difficult. At the same time, I don't want to make the issue worse by pulling him out or allowing him to sit in the big church with us because James won't learn to handle these situations well.
Don't get me wrong...if James was obviously hating being in his class, we would pull him out and allow him to sit with us until he settled in more. However, he is smiling when we come to pick him up, and he is usually pretty excited about his craft projects and everything. There is no way the big church service would be fun for him at all...except perhaps the music.
Hopefully James will adjust soon to his new classroom and look forward to church on the weekends instead of dreading it. I expect we may have to deal with this emotional conundrum each time James moves up to a new classroom, but eventually I have hope that James will be able to handle the changes without it affecting him so drastically.
I also know the time will be coming for Sam as well. It will not be a fun process, but with separation anxiety, I can at least breathe a sigh of relief and think I am doing something right since that is a sign of bonding and attachment...or so I've been told. With James we pulled him out of the nursery for a good few months when he went through separation anxiety because we would be paged out of church all the time, and we figured it wasn't worth the stress to James. We will do the same for Sam if need be. Technically the only reason we have Sam in the nursery already is because there are occasional weekends where both my husband and I volunteer (hubby works in tech booth, I help with special needs), so we wanted to make sure Sam could handle nursery well for those days. We kept him with us in service for awhile at first for the whole bonding and attachment focus.
Watching your child grow up is amazing, and you just hope you are doing the right thing and teaching them properly.
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