Separation

About six weeks ago, Mr. Mister started having a really hard time anytime a babysitter came.  We don't have babysitters often, but we did have our neighbor come over every Wednesday night so we could go to small group.  We purposely have small group at 8:30 when kids are sleeping, so ideally he would go to sleep and it wouldn't make a difference who was sitting downstairs.

But all of a sudden it started being very traumatic for him every time we left.  He would ask every day if we had to go to small group that night.  On Wednesdays, he would get so sad and say things all day like, "This is just really hard for me.  Can we talk about this?"  It was actually kind of hard not to chuckle at his adult like verbal processing.  When it came time for us to leave he would cry hysterically in his bed, begging us not to leave.  Eventually, he just cried himself to sleep after we were gone.

The last couple weeks our group has been meeting at our house, which has made him very happy.  But last night he woke up in the middle of the night sobbing and came into our room asking if we were going to small group.  He must have been dreaming about it.

Until recently, he was great when we would leave.  He'd give us a hug and say goodbye and go off playing with the babysitter.   So I'm wondering if there is some sort of correlation between starting preschool and this separation struggle.  He has no problem going to school or saying goodbye when we get to his classroom.  But my sister said she has heard that separation anxiety resurfaces in some kids when they start preschool even if they don't struggle with going to school.

I know most of you who read my blog have younger kids, but does anyone have any insight into this?  I'm sure it's just a stage, as everything is, but when he woke up in the middle of the night crying about us leaving it made me so sad!