That’s the phrase which was tearfully spit out by a sobbing little girl in our driveway this morning.

Really, this morning wasn’t that different from any other – except maybe that Ron had to be to work early, so wasn’t here to help get everyone up and moving. Hannah’s been hard to get up – but that’s nothing new. She takes after me. 

Even getting dressed, breakfast – all of it was just fine. She did cry through hair-brushing – but again, that’s nothing new either.  It’s better now with the shorter haircut, but she still bursts into tears the moment I pull out the brush.

This is my ‘dramatic’ child, after all.  And I keep pointing out the direct correlation between seeing her sucking or chewing on her hair during the day and the amount of pulling and pain it takes to get a brush through it in the mornings. But I really don’t think that the hair brushing – again, which is a normal occurrence – had anything to do with today’s meltdown at the bus stop.

Hannah has ridden the bus to school for over a year now – without crying or even a single complaint (except for a wistful comment every so often that she wishes she could be in the ‘parent pickup’ line).

Which is why what happened this morning completely threw me for a loop.

She got her shoes and backpack on just fine – she was a bit upset that I didn’t have a clean water bottle for her to take (she left it at school yesterday and the other ones were dirty), but that’s not usually a big deal either. She ran down the driveway and across the side street over to the bus stop at the corner.

She was the last one there.  Even Abby, who is normally a slowpoke and hard to get moving quickly in the mornings, was in front of her in line to get on the bus.

And apparently, being last in line causes Hannah’s entire world to crash down around her.

I was surprised when she crossed the street back to our yard, and wondered if she’d forgotten something.

Nope, unless you could count her composure.  She was in tears about being last.

I don’t have a lot of patience in the mornings (who does?!), and the bus chose this exact moment to turn the corner and pull up to the stop. I walked pulled Hannah over to the bus, trying in vain to convince her to get on it. Even the bus driver (who she knows well since he drove this route last year too) was trying to talk her into getting on the bus.

She absolutely refused, clinging to me and crying, “I want Mommy!”.

After a few minutes of unsuccessful coaxing, I had to make a choice. The bus was already going to be running late due to Hannah’s histrionics, and arguing with her just tends to make things worse in this kind of situation – she’s a child who feeds off of drama.

I picked her up, carried her up the steps onto the bus, pried her arms off of me and left.

And I was about in tears by that point too. I don’t like sending my child off when she’s that upset – but I knew that giving in and driving her to school myself would be a huge mistake. One that she would then want (and expect) me to repeat from here on out. She rides the bus to school – period.

But that didn’t make me feel any less of a horrible mother for literally forcing my child on the bus when there was obviously something wrong. Whether it was just the frustration of not wanting to be last in the bus line, or something else, I have no idea. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of it when she gets home in a half hour now.

I did call and leave a message on her teacher’s phone, and I spoke to the office as well – to give them a ‘heads-up’ since I had no idea what kind of mood Hannah would be in when she got off the bus at school. It’s entirely possible that everything blew over as soon as the bus started moving, and she could’ve been just fine by the time she arrived. But just in case, I wanted to make sure that the school was prepared to deal with her. And I made sure they knew they could call me if they needed to.

They didn’t.  Apparently she must have calmed down enough to go about her normal school day.

I know that we’re lucky that our girls love school and we don’t really have any discipline problems with them at all (so far anyway) – which is probably why this morning shocked and upset me so much.

Kids are just full of surprises – of all kinds, I guess.

Update:  She was fine when she got home, and had been fine at school too.  It seems that the bus driver must be prepared for this type of behavior because a roll of Necco wafers had made everything better. Now I have to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of her getting ‘rewarded’ with candy after an episode like this… Sigh. We had a long talk – as did she and Ron tonight too, and I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of this morning. I hope not, anyway. She certainly knows that she’ll lose just about every privilege that she has if it does happen again.