My question is similar to a previous one in that my 21-month-old boy cries miserably at the door of his daycare room every morning. The difference is that the crying continues all morning—at least until mid-day nap time. If he sleeps, sometimes the afternoon is then OK. Once or twice he's had a miserable afternoon too. This has been going on for about two weeks.
He has been going to this daycare from the age of 3 months. He was OK in the infant classroom, then, several weeks ago his initial week in the toddler room was reportedly great (at least, someone told me, "as great as it ever can be when you share a class with [insert name of disruptive child who upsets everyone]"). Then there was a break of nearly two weeks, during which there were also some staff changes, and when we resumed... misery.
What to do? My instinct tells me to try to minimize the drama (we try not to make a big deal about going to school and always talk about it positively) but then power through it so that he has an opportunity to learn to be less sensitive to whichever aspects bother him (the separation? the problem kid? the new teachers? ...?) My wife has endured this up to a point, but has now started taking him home again and staying there with him when it gets really bad (a couple of days so far). I worry both about the inconsistency this presents to him and also about the message it sends that crying gets you out of things you don't like.
Consultation with the daycare director seemed like a good way to get more insight. We were reassured that this is probably a natural "bump" and a frequent occurrence and it'll work itself out. Without disagreeing with this outright (it might be right, for all I know) we tried to get more detail/advice but were rapidly treated as if we were the problem and the wagons started defensively circling as if we were complaining (which we were not) unreasonably (which we are not). So probably nothing more constructive can come from that avenue.
Help?