A good day in Primary (or the I had a "I would be an okay mom" realization)

Okay so I have to toot my own horn about Primary yesterday. This is basically a journal entry but a good story...read on, please...

An 8 year old girl named "Mary" was in the hallway crying to her mother and Primary teacher yesterday when she was supposed to be in Sharing Time. I stopped to check on her and her mom said she didn't want to be at church today. She has a father who doesn't attend church regularly and they are kind of hit and miss attendance-wise. The teacher said she was going to take her to the bathroom for tissue and I stayed and talked to the mom.

The mom (who has 5 kids total) then said her two younger kids can manipulate her into leaving church early and she didn't understand why her older kids weren't able to do that (no meant no with the older ones.) I told her "go to class - she can't manipulate you if you're not here." The mom said "are you sure?" I said "yes, we'll take care of it."

She left, the teacher came back with Mary. The teacher (a mother of six children who, frankly, should have known better) then said "I really think Mary isn't feeling well because she's not usually weepy like this." I told them Mary's mom had gone to class so Mary needed to go too. She started to cry again and I offered to take her on a walk around the church so she could get some fresh air and feel better and teacher could go back to sharing time.

Mary put her hand in mine and we walked around the church building. We talked about being in the third grade and how her teacher likes frogs and how I broke my wrist rollerskating when I was in the third grade. We passed Kim's husband who asked Mary if Sister Shaw was being bad in Primary and that's why she had to walk me around the building. (very funny!)

We got back to the Primary Room and it was time for class. She didn't last long and soon was sitting on her mom's lap, crying in the mother's lounge. I asked her if she would come and help me with the secretary stuff because I was doing double-duty yesterday. I told Mary her mom needed to go to Relief Society and the only way she could do that is if Mary came and helped me. So she did.

We figured out who was at Primary and who wasn't. We assigned the talks and scripture and prayers for next week (she got a prayer assignment.) I got in the message that it's hard to find kids to give the talks because lots of them don't come every week. We sat in the back and sang the songs and she stopped looking sad and started smiling.

I won't let her skip class again next week but I feel like I handled this situation the way it should be handled. She ended up leaving Primary smiling and happy and hopefully, those good feelings will carry over to next Sunday.

My favorite thing? The fact that she wanted to hold my hand the whole entire time we walked around the church. It was nice to be needed.