Sam is clingier than cling wrap

Since we moved house, and church, Josh went off to school and Jeff went off to work, Samuel has been getting increasingly more clingy. For the last few weeks he has been crying hysterically, wrapping his little arms around my leg or flinging himself on the floor, whenever I have left him at Sunday School or the BSF children's program. This has made my participation in the Sunday church gathering and BSF class difficult, to say the least.

I guess part of it is the age he's at, but part of it is also exacerbated by all the changes that have happened with our family. I am not quite sure how to deal with it, because I know that he needs reassurance, but he also needs to learn cause and effect - if I leave, I will return. And I need to be able to have time away from the children, and that cannot only be when Jeff is available to look after them, especially when that time is the Sunday morning service.

None of this has been made any easier by my decision to have one more go at weaning Samuel from sucking his thumb. We've been largely successful this time, but it took some hard yakka. I taped his thumb to his pointer finger with soft, non-irritating Fixomull, and then taped over that and around his whole hand below the fingers with stronger bonding bandage tape. Then we left that on day and night until it was getting too icky, took it off, gave him a bath, and put the whole shebang back on again. For just over a week, we persisted with this until Sammy was no longer sucking his thumb through the bandages (ick) or even really moving his hand unconsciously towards his face. For the first few days, he kept holding his hand over his face where it would be if he had his thumb in his mouth, then he stopped that and just put it by his head. At that stage, we decided he could just have the Fixomull taped around his thumb only. It's soft and cottony and doesn't make a nice sucking texture, so he kept his thumb out of his mouth. We kept that up for another week. Around this time Jeff and I were going mad with his crying at night so we decided, since he was doing so well with not sucking during the day, we'd let him have access to it at night. Now, even though he has a bare thumb again, it only ever goes into his mouth when he is actually asleep. He doesn't suck it to go to sleep, nor when he is upset or tired, although he still pulls at his other ear at some of these times.

So he has been weaned of his major comforting mechanism, and been put through a series of major upheavals. Is it any wonder this two year old just wants to cuddle his mummy?

Last Sunday I ended up spending most of the time out with Samuel in the Noah's Ark class, only leaving right towards the end when he was very comfortable, so I could join the church for Holy Communion. I had tried leaving earlier during the service, but without success; the helper had come to get me because he was crying on the floor.

This morning at BSF I stayed in with him for a while. I helped him hang up his bag and distracted him from the fact that he was in the room where he knew I would leave him, by looking at the colourful characters decorating the other children's bags, such as Elmo, Pooh & Tigger, Bob, the whole familiar list; somewhere in there was a Br*tz face, but we won't go into what I thought about that! After he was distracted I sat with him on the play rug and helped him to get started playing with some toys. Then I moved a little further away, to sit on the edge of the mat. When he wanted to show me a toy he'd found, I expressed little fascination, but prompted him to show his Children's Leader. Then I moved so my back was to him. Then I moved away to sit on a chair further across the room.

All the while I was using the time to pray for my little boy, that he would settle well and remain calm enough to pay attention during the Bible story, in particular.

When I was confident he had settled in well to playing, I called out good bye, gave him a reassuring pat as he ran towards me bursting into tears, and then left him in the capable hands of the Children's Leaders. I went off to my small group, knowing that they would come and get me if he failed to settle. They didn't need to! After a short period of crying, he was fine.

When I came to pick him up, he was full of joy to see me, but I could also tell by looking at his eyes and face that he hadn't been crying for a fair long while. He had been happy at class today. I was very relieved. Now I am looking forward to trying this method of settling deliberately, praying hard, then leaving gently on Sunday. We'll see if he can improve again!