So you are telling me that you have spent the better part of 4 years feeling like a good for nothing sucktastic parent because you have elected to send your child to a.....oh no...don't say it... a DAYCARE????
Well..... pretty much. It was not all in my head either. There were people all around me making me feel bad about it. It was probably rooted in the fact that I was raised by a stay at home mom. No complaints.....I thought it was great. So great, in fact, that for some reason I pitied kids that had parents that worked and had to go to daycare or a babysitter. My mom got to be at all our programs, school parties, and was always there. In turn, I remember dreading ever having to be "babysitted" by anyone else. I think I spent the better part of the first 3 years attached to my mothers right hip. My mother still thinks if you are going to have kids you should stay at home and "raise them yourself."
Now enter guilt tripper number 2, my dad. To his credit, he spent the vast majority of my childhood working so that my mom could stay home with us. Sure he would realize the reality of having to earn a living after you have children. Well, I vividly remember at my babyshower when I was pregnant with my first, beloved Mike says to me, " So your not going back to work are you?" To which I replied, "Well, yes, I supposed I am after the baby is 6 or 8 weeks old, I am going to go back to work and the baby will probably go to daycare." I clearly remember his only response was "THAT'S AWFUL." Really, are we kidding? The man that taught me how to roll my own cigarettes "because it is cheaper," and the finer point of the differences between Ten High and Kentucky Tavern is now giving me some parenting tips....
So then with all the bad juju surrounding it, we actually start daycare part-time. What made it worse was that my sweet little crib midget would literally scream all the way in to daycare, then actually have to surgically be removed from me by the teacher. All while he was screaming, MOMMY, MOMMY, DON'T LEAVE ME. Eventually I would have to literally turn my back from my screaming pleading child and walk away. Talk about feeling like crap. Well, that little show went on for TWO YEARS. Yep 365 days x 2. I would read these articles on the web that most kids would get adjusted after 2-3 weeks, at most, a month. Well, not my little Tripp. He could have made Hilter feel like a bad person at the AM drop off session every morning. It really made me question whether or not after I left, they were engaging him in a waterboarding session or something.
Sometimes when I would pick him up, I would walk into the room and he would be very happy and playing, the minute he would see me, he would start crying. It was almost like he forgot and was like, "Oh, Sh#t, she's supposed to think that I hate it here, better go into instant psycho mode to cover up my seemingly normal behavior that she just witnessed. They would swear to me that he was fine during the day,but it was hard to imagine anything but his frantic little voice calling my name. He was the damn master of the guilt trip.
Several times, I thought about pulling him out of daycare. For one, there was the traumatic emmy-winning performances each morning that I had to endure. Second, there was the never-ending cycle of sickness from about the ages of 14 months to 24 months. Especially, after his first febrile seizure happened, then I walk around with a damn ear thermometer in my back pocket all the time just waiting for signs of illness to appear. Believe me, I didn't have to wait long either. That boy didn't go 2 weeks that whole year without some sort of new illness or fever to deal with. Around the age of 2, I honestly got to a point that I just didn't know if it was worth it to take him there. Deep down, I felt like the interaction with other children was a good thing. I knew that being exposed to germs was an inevitable part of life and if his immune system didn't get primed now, I would just be dealing with a sick kid the entire first year he went to Kindergarten. Plus, I still had to two above mentioned parental units that were negative Nancying my efforts to hold strong and push through.
So what changed my mind????
1. Well lets be honest, first off, I live with one of the cheapest individuals on the planet. We actually make about 8 times the income now that we did when we first got married, and he is just as tight as ever. There was no way he was going to let me quit work.
2. I spent 6 years of my life in college. I also spent almost a cool $100,000 getting my PA degree. Furthermore, PA was friggin hard. It was like drinking fire through a water hose. I really just wasn't ready to flush all that down the sh$tter to stay home and be supermom. I feel most like myself when I am at work, and I love what I do. Personally, I think that when I get home from work, I am a much better mom because I haven't gotten to see my kids all day. At the end of everyday I am genuinely excited to go pick them up. I have patience (most of the time) for things that I dont think that I would if I stayed home all day.
3. Tripp started coming home telling me things that I knew I didn't teach him. I'm not talking bad things, I'm talking songs, letters, numbers, Spanish for goodness sakes. Come to find out, they do about 1000x more with my kids than I would probably be able to do with them if I stayed home. Crafts-EVERYDAY! Songs, letters, colors, shapes, languages. They serve them healthy food ( Guarantee if I was home with them everyday we would be eating a smorgasbord of Hostess Cakes and peanut butter from the jar on the daily.)
They are way better to my kids than I think I even have the capability of being.
4. It started becoming clear that he was used to taking turns, sharing, and generally having to interact with other kids. Tripp being an only child at the time, the probababilty of major bratiness was at an all time high. I realize that the more he was around other kids and the general structured environment of daycare, the better he got at home.
5 The constant sickness got better. Pretty much you will need to lock yourself into 1 entire year of the snots when your kid starts daycare. Hell, better yet, go ahead and pencil yourself in for a bimonthly appt with the pediatrician, and a once a month counseling session for your mother and mother-in-law with a therapist. They will both need to be regularly talked off the ledge that your child does not, in fact, need to be on an antibiotic salt lick.
So, eventually you just wise up and realize that your would quit wasting time feeling like crap for sending your child to a safe, fun, stimulating environment while you go try to be a productive member of society. You could totally do much worse. Watch Dateline for about 5 minutes to verify that. Daycares are monitered by the state, regularly inspected, and rated based on numerous factors. Do you realize that any dipsh#t can pop out a baby and stay home and raise them however they choose. So if that means letting them watch TV all day or eat a variety of Chips Ahoy products for every meal, that doesn't mean they are getting better care just because their mom is staying home with them.
Just like everything else in life, its the quality of time you spend with your kids, not the quantity. So step away from the ledge people, I am letting go of the daycare guilt, and you should too!
 |
| So is this how you keep them contained all day???? |
Sometimes when I would pick him up, I would walk into the room and he would be very happy and playing, the minute he would see me, he would start crying. It was almost like he forgot and was like, "Oh, Sh#t, she's supposed to think that I hate it here, better go into instant psycho mode to cover up my seemingly normal behavior that she just witnessed. They would swear to me that he was fine during the day,but it was hard to imagine anything but his frantic little voice calling my name. He was the damn master of the guilt trip.
Several times, I thought about pulling him out of daycare. For one, there was the traumatic emmy-winning performances each morning that I had to endure. Second, there was the never-ending cycle of sickness from about the ages of 14 months to 24 months. Especially, after his first febrile seizure happened, then I walk around with a damn ear thermometer in my back pocket all the time just waiting for signs of illness to appear. Believe me, I didn't have to wait long either. That boy didn't go 2 weeks that whole year without some sort of new illness or fever to deal with. Around the age of 2, I honestly got to a point that I just didn't know if it was worth it to take him there. Deep down, I felt like the interaction with other children was a good thing. I knew that being exposed to germs was an inevitable part of life and if his immune system didn't get primed now, I would just be dealing with a sick kid the entire first year he went to Kindergarten. Plus, I still had to two above mentioned parental units that were negative Nancying my efforts to hold strong and push through.
So what changed my mind????
1. Well lets be honest, first off, I live with one of the cheapest individuals on the planet. We actually make about 8 times the income now that we did when we first got married, and he is just as tight as ever. There was no way he was going to let me quit work.
2. I spent 6 years of my life in college. I also spent almost a cool $100,000 getting my PA degree. Furthermore, PA was friggin hard. It was like drinking fire through a water hose. I really just wasn't ready to flush all that down the sh$tter to stay home and be supermom. I feel most like myself when I am at work, and I love what I do. Personally, I think that when I get home from work, I am a much better mom because I haven't gotten to see my kids all day. At the end of everyday I am genuinely excited to go pick them up. I have patience (most of the time) for things that I dont think that I would if I stayed home all day.
3. Tripp started coming home telling me things that I knew I didn't teach him. I'm not talking bad things, I'm talking songs, letters, numbers, Spanish for goodness sakes. Come to find out, they do about 1000x more with my kids than I would probably be able to do with them if I stayed home. Crafts-EVERYDAY! Songs, letters, colors, shapes, languages. They serve them healthy food ( Guarantee if I was home with them everyday we would be eating a smorgasbord of Hostess Cakes and peanut butter from the jar on the daily.)
They are way better to my kids than I think I even have the capability of being.
4. It started becoming clear that he was used to taking turns, sharing, and generally having to interact with other kids. Tripp being an only child at the time, the probababilty of major bratiness was at an all time high. I realize that the more he was around other kids and the general structured environment of daycare, the better he got at home.
5 The constant sickness got better. Pretty much you will need to lock yourself into 1 entire year of the snots when your kid starts daycare. Hell, better yet, go ahead and pencil yourself in for a bimonthly appt with the pediatrician, and a once a month counseling session for your mother and mother-in-law with a therapist. They will both need to be regularly talked off the ledge that your child does not, in fact, need to be on an antibiotic salt lick.
 |
| Step away from the Amoxil, it's a virus! |
So, eventually you just wise up and realize that your would quit wasting time feeling like crap for sending your child to a safe, fun, stimulating environment while you go try to be a productive member of society. You could totally do much worse. Watch Dateline for about 5 minutes to verify that. Daycares are monitered by the state, regularly inspected, and rated based on numerous factors. Do you realize that any dipsh#t can pop out a baby and stay home and raise them however they choose. So if that means letting them watch TV all day or eat a variety of Chips Ahoy products for every meal, that doesn't mean they are getting better care just because their mom is staying home with them.
Just like everything else in life, its the quality of time you spend with your kids, not the quantity. So step away from the ledge people, I am letting go of the daycare guilt, and you should too!
No comments:
Post a Comment