Riding the Crazy Train

For a little while now things had been calm with Chica Marie. Her behaviors seemed to subside a bit after the adoption and only minimal things popped up occasionally. Until yesterday. When I arrived at the daycare I was pulled aside by the director who had a few things to share with me. He started with the best of the bad news. Love Bug has been having some issues in daycare with not cooperating with the group activities and being unwilling to accept things not happening when he wanted them to happen. So, he didn’t have a great day yesterday but it wasn’t anything new, just the same issues he’s been having. The next piece of information was that Chica Marie had taken it upon herself to change the name on the cubbies of the children in her classroom and mass confusion and chaos ensued. She was told to not do it again. The worst of the bad news was that Chica Marie had been kissing other children (it seems just girls) and earlier in the afternoon she was caught making out and “tongue” kissing another little girl. This was the second time it has happened, only I wasn’t informed the first time. The incident was described to me as “a full-on make-out session” and it was stressed that kissing of any kind was not permitted in the center. The director wanted to hear suggestions on how to handle this going forward in order to prevent future inappropriate contact. We are talking about my seven year old daughter, not a love-struck hormonal teenager! The only suggestion I had was to provide more structure for Chica Marie, to not let her have oodles of unplanned down time because that was when she found trouble for herself. I recommended making up a list of chores she could do and have monitored by a staff member to keep her on task. She is only in the day care for a little over 90 minutes before I get there to pick her up. I also promised to talk to her mobile therapist about it to see if he had any other suggestions. I tried talking to Chica Marie about it but I’m not so sure she really understood what I was trying to say or how doing things like this can cause her trouble in the future. I also don’t know what the involvement was of the other girls. Did they egg each other on or was Chica Maire persuading them to do it reluctantly? It seemed, in how the story was expressed to me, that Chica Marie was the aggressor, but did that mean the other girl(s) was unwilling? And where did she learn these things? I’m ready to get off this crazy train right now….