Hard

This has been a hard week, or rather, 3 days. Ruby has not adjusted to school at all yet. Every morning it has been a case of the teachers (and on one day, the Principal) physically reatraining her as I leave. I know that she does settle pretty quickly, as I make a point of checking, without her seeing me, after a few minutes. But on Thursday when I came to pick her up she came out as white as a sheet, and on the verge of tears. The teacher told me that she she had been frightened by the torrential rain storm that had just passed, there was thunder and lightening and the sound of the rain on the tin roof of the covered area was extremely loud, and Ruby totally freaked out. On Friday morning again, she wouldn't go into school, and that afternoon the teacher came to see me and said that she had had a melt down just before lunch (so, only 2 hours into the day), and remained teary for most of the remainder. Apparently it wasn't a tantrum, in the words of the teacher, "she was just very sad."

Great.

Yesterday I took Ruby to her first ballet class, something that she has been looking forward to for ages. And she freaked out there too. I had to sit in on the class and Ruby barely left my side. She joined in with the exercises, but she wouldn't move out into the room with the other little girls. She is just so insecure about everything right now. And the difficulty really is that she can be SUCH a total little shit! She argues with me from the moment she opens her eyes. Any answer of no from me is immediately greeted by pleading, whinging, whining all done in an escalating volume. And it's not as though I give into her. She is just so stubborn. For example, she will say, "Mummy, can I have a biscuit?" And I'll say "No" and before I can say, "but you can have a piece of fruit." she will start "BUT PLEASE MUMMY! PLEASE! I WANT A BISCUIT! I AM HUNGRY! I WILL HAVE A BISCUIT!" There is no in between state. So then of course I get angry with her, as my patience has long since been eroded away. That's what it's like at the moment, a constant chipping away at my self esteem, patience and resolve. Some days I have times when I think to myself, "I can't do this anymore." Then other times she is so sweet, like right now I can hear her warbling in her high voice the words to Fifi and the Flowertots as Brett plays it on the guitar.

The truth is, she only really behaves badly for me. The preschool teachers always said how good and cooperative she was, and the school teachers say the same. So I am caught between a terrible feeling of despair that my little girl is so unhappy away from me, and a giddy happiness that I have 6 hours a day away from her.