<\/p>\nI always thought separation anxiety developed when the baby was around eight months old, and since that never really happened with Lucy, I’ve been hoping we bypassed that uncomfortable milestone. Mama was wrong. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
p{color:gray}. Photo: Lucy and Mama back in February 2007.<\/p>\n
Lucy has been quite a fearless child so far in her life. Just a month ago, I left her with “Aunt Linda”:\/news\/2007\/laughs-with-aunt-linda\/ as I went out for the evening, with Lucy waving at me and saying “bye-bye” happily as I walked out the door. But a couple of weeks ago, Lucy started to exhibit some discontent when I leave her with my twice-a-week “Mother’s helper,” Idea (ee-DAY-ah). She has been coming for a couple of hours after school for probably six weeks now, and Lucy has always had fun with her — I work in the basement and can often hear them laughing and running around the house upstairs. But now Lucy clings to me and cries whenever Idea even comes to the door.<\/p>\n
I have been thinking through some strategies. I think that Lucy might be especially tenacious in her crying when Idea watches her because I simply walk downstairs — she knows that I’m still in the house. So, perhaps I should try walking out the front door and sneak into our basement office from the back entrance? But first, I’m considering spending a couple of afternoons upstairs, playing with Lucy along with Idea — maybe we’ll all clean the house together! (Lucy continues to adore the “vacuum cleaner”:\/news\/2007\/whatever-blows-your-hair-back\/.)<\/p>\n
I was especially worried how things would go last weekend, when Jon and I had planned our first overnight away together to celebrate our seventh anniversary. Lucy was pretty clingy as soon as “uncle derek and Aunt Linda”:\/news\/2006\/first-date\/ arrived to stay with her overnight, but we all played together for about thirty minutes before Jon and I left, and the tears that came with our departure only lasted a few seconds. This coming weekend, Jon and Lucy will be on their own for the first time as I attend the InterVarsity Women’s Staff Conference, and of course I’m feeling guilty already. :)<\/p>\n
The good news is that Lucy must really be catching on with the whole object-permanence thing for her to get so freaked out by my leaving! And surely, her memory and predicting abilities will improve too so that she can imagine me returning to her. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just call home a lot while I’m out of town. The fact is, I think I’m having some separation anxiety myself about this weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always thought separation anxiety developed when the baby was around eight months old, and since that never really happened with Lucy, I’ve been hoping we bypassed that uncomfortable milestone. Mama was wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}