Donovan has been suffering separation anxiety from leaving the senior nursery. This has been a rough transition for him but I don't suppose I can really blame him. With a birthday in January he was definitely the oldest on in his class. And the nursery has toys and treats and fun activities for 2 hours!
Now that he goes to primary he is at the bottom of the food chain; everyone is bigger and older than he is. I don't know if they have an actual teacher for his class yet. Now he has to go to sharing time which general last as long as sacrament meeting, from 1:20-2:40 p.m.! That is a long time to sit after being so reverent through sacrament meeting and this all occurs in the middle of the afternoon!
But this last Sunday he managed to struggle through, but not without a minor hiccup. After Sacrament meeting the boys all headed off to class, or so we thought. Just to be sure, we followed them up the stairs to the primary room to verify that all boys were secured. Well, David was in sharing time and Michael was in his new nursery room but Donovan was no where to be found. Needless to say we felt as small twinge of anxiety.
We put our books and bags down and began to search through the entire church building to find out missing son. We double-checked in sharing time but the leaders hadn't seen him (they noticed because they were supposed to sing a "Happy Birthday" song to him this week). We rechecked the nursery room and then started through the bathrooms, other random classrooms and adult Sunday school classes. Back through the cultural hall and chapel and, just to be sure, poke our heads outside and check by the car. No Donovan!
Admittedly, we were started to get a little concerned. Another primary leader joined in the search. Just when we had decided to start checking every room in the building a little head just poked out of a darkened classroom! Donovan didn't want to go in the big room with all the big kids so he had taken a detour and was just as happy as could be in a room all by himself. We were just excited to find him.
It still took some coaxing to get him into the room. Then Michelle helped him find his way from the very back of the room up to his seat with his class. I don't know what else happened after we left but we found him after church happily participating with his class. So it appears that he survived his first full day in primary. Let's hope next week goes even better.
