Church

Just one more thing I enjoy that will have to go on the list for things to do in about 15 years after AKA is on her own (God willing), is CHURCH.

We have been able to pull it off and slide under the radar the past year. AKA was in the 2s and 3s class, so her behavior could still be chalked up to baby stuff, terrible twos, what have you...

But it does not fly in the preschool class. Hitting the teacher. Hitting the other children. That is grounds for removal from the class. Today while I was peacefully enjoying the sermon and music upstairs, the poor Sunday school teachers and nicely behaved children downstairs were being assaulted by my kid.

That is just not okay!

These are very nice, long suffering, merciful women who volunteer to watch my kid for free for 1.5 hours every Sunday so that I can gain a blessing and maybe some peace of mind for the week. For my kid to mistreat these women deeply wounds me. Plus it is mortifying, since you know what people are thinking when they see a child who hits--I know what they think, because of what I have always thought when I see naughty kids.

And it's ironic that as we arrived this morning, on our way to her preschooler class, the head of the children's ministry saw the agonized look on my face (because AKA was throwing a fit at the check-in, insisting everyone call her "Arnold" from Magic Schoolbus), and pulled me aside to give me a hug and say, "She is so lucky to have the perfect mom, and Jesus gave you such a perfect daughter" (Bwahahahahah! is all I can say to that now).

So after the sermon today, when I went downstairs to pick up AKA, I found her being supervised in the baby room, due to her removal from the preschool class, which is the best they could do since there did not happen to be a wild animal CAGE on the premises.

I am so terribly sad and depressed we won't be able to go to church anymore. But I don't have anyone to watch her while I go. Who would want to babysit on a Sunday morning? Seriously. So that's that.

AKA is very high functioning. If she were a lower functioning child I would feel less anger toward the situation. But since she is so high functioning, I expect more from her. And so does everyone else. We are like half breeds. We don't fit into the typically developing crowd, and aren't low functioning enough to be accepted by the special needs crowd. So we just hang out by ourselves most of the time, because the list of places we can go and things we can do just gets shorter and shorter.