"Just save the Relationship"

Latest trial in life, one of my little ones is painfully shy, very painfully.  He especially cannot handle large groups of people where he feels that he is expected to preform... like primary, library story time, preschool groups, etc... We have been trying to get him to go to primary without us going too or a meltdown for 2 yrs now.  Before moving ~ 10 months ago things finally settled down and he was comfortable enough with his teachers and fellow classmates to go without any worries.  Then we moved.  And we tried to keep the same routine... needless to say it didn't work.  So we tried the pop-pychology method of leave him, he'll cry and fight for a few minutes and then be fine.  It didn't work either.  I mean he stayed in class usually (with his wonderful teacher holding him) but after months of doing this we weren't getting far, in fact it was causing a lot of residual problems with his trust in us.  I mean what do you think a child would start to think after multiple times of being truly nervous and scared of a situation and doing all you could to let your parents know that you were not comfortable and they say, "sorry too bad, see ya, this is good for you" (we didn't say that... but that is likely what he was feeling).  It didn't do much for his trust and relationship with us.  So we had a parental time-out and looked at our "play" for this situation and realized what we were doing wasn't working and was actually augmenting the problem.  So we tried a new "play" (I'll have to explain this more later - kinda like a football team/coaches come up with plays for their team).  And started back at square one with one of us sitting with him through sharing time of primary, once they headed to the smaller class room he really did fine on a more personal level, so we would bow out and head to our class.  And it has been working!  Then we started working our way out of sharing time a little earlier each week, once we knew he was comfortable enough to not feel nervous when we were gone.  We are down to 5-10 mins now!

My big concern is how things are going to work when we head to Kindergarten next year.  This is part of the reason I decided to take care of preschool myself (which I'll be honest - hasn't been as structured or frequent as I'd planned, and I obviously haven't kept up with blogging what we do).   We are in a babysitting co-op (which is great!) and one of the girls we had over the other day was in the pre-schooling co-op, which we had decided not to join in on in the fall.  But watching him interact with her and with the way things are going now with primary, I'm beginning to think he may be ready for a new change... and started thinking about preschool co-op.    The catch is that I'd need to be able to stay with him for the first 5-10 mins (at least) every preschool day.   And the other one is that once again, I just don't like the idea of leaving his education at this age to someone else... ugh I'm caught.  What I'd love is a preschool co-op where a few mom's worked together to provide preschool for their children and had a schedule etc, but didn't drop off their kids... all stayed together and worked together.  A Mother & Me Preschool!

Anyway what I was really getting at with this post is... everyone tells me to let him cry, just leave him and he'll be fine.  And I tried that, but it does not work for him, and no I don't think that we are coddling him.  I've even had people say I should talk to a psychologist about it... but I don't think he needs that.  I was really flustered about everything, wondering what was the best thing to do... and it came to me all of a sudden, "Just save the relationship" I had read this years ago in Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley.  Yes he may get around to accepting the fact that that is how school goes, but he would be resistant and it would deteriorate his relationship with us (as we already learned), and he would likely learn to hate school.  So despite what anyone thinks of me, him, all of us... I am going to work on saving the relationship.  Because in the end, it won't matter whether he was the perfect school child walking into class, it doesn't matter if people think something of us because we have to work harder to help him be comfortable in new situations, it Does matter how he feels and what he thinks of us as his mom and dad and our love for him.  So now when I'm not sure what to do, if our relationship hangs in the balance I will "Just save the relationship" because if we are close to him, we can be a much greater influence for good in his life.