The Whistle

Lilly attends Awana at a nearby church.  For the first few months, she loved it - loved playing with her friends, making the neat crafts, learning God's word, singing new songs, and eating yummy snacks.  Then, all of a sudden, one week she started saying, "I don't want to go to cubbies anymore."  At the time, I just shrugged it off, not thinking much of it.  When it came time to go to cubbies that next week, she freaked out like I have never seen before.  She was screaming and pushing me away, saying, "I don't want to go, Mom!"  Well, of course, my "mom alert" went off and I thought something is wrong here.  So, I started to question her, "Why don't you want to go?"  "Did something happen?"  The only thing she would tell me was that she did not like the guy on the playground blowing the whistle.  In my mind, I'm thinking this is silly, she doesn't want to go because of the whistle?  But, because of her reaction, I went and talked with the director - we came up with a plan that she would skip the playground that week and just stay in the snack rotation twice.  The plan appeased Lilly so that is what we did.

The next week, I was curious about what went on in the playground area, so I went to observe while Lilly's group was in there.  I didn't see anything alarming and the man with the whistle wasn't there, so no problem.  The week after that, I went to observe again, the man with the whistle happened to be there, so I talked to him asking him if he could either not blow the whistle when her group was in there or warn her before he blew it, so she could cover her ears.  He agreed - no problem.  After a few weeks of observing, I decided that things seemed to be going okay so I told Lilly I would not be in the playground but that I would continue to remind the "playground guy" about blowing the whistle when she was in there - no problem. 

Lilly didn't seem to love cubbies after that, but she went and she didn't complain.  Then, just last week she faked a stomach ache during awana to get out of going to the playground - the teacher in the class had to call me to come talk with her because she wasn't sure if her stomach ache was for real or not.

There are only a few weeks left in Awana and I don't want her to miss out on the things she enjoys just because of the playground, so I talked with the director again and we decide she will skip the playground for the rest of Awana.  Lilly likes that plan.

I still am a little concerned about the whole situation, wondering is it really just the whistle or is there something she isn't telling me.  I just don't know, but it is one of those situations where I wish there were a manual for being a parent because I could really use some wisdom in this area.