For many, daycare is actually the bane of the modern parent's self-confidence. A sort of, evil necessity at times.
Due to the ever-increasing costs of raising a child, fewer and fewer parents have the option of not working and being a stay-at-home mom or dad. Consequently, children as young as three months (like Kenny) go to daycare Monday through Friday for most of the day.
While there are perks to daycare for sure, such as improved social skills and experienced care-givers, who can help rookie parents navigate the confusing waters of raising a child, there are pitfalls as well. During the week, your child ends up spending more quality time with the daycare providers than with you.
For instance, I take care of Kenny in the mornings and get him up, fed, dressed and out to daycare. Overboard leaves earlier in the morning to get to work, and then gets to leave in the late afternoon to pick up Mr. K and bring him home. They have a chance to bond and play for an hour or two, before it's time to eat and then get ready for bed. By the time I get home from work, I am usually just in time to help but the boy to sleep for the night.
Basically, our quality time with Kenny comes on the weekends, and that's a battle in the mornings, because Overboard and I are both trying to catch up on lost sleep as well. This leads to pre-noon tag-team parenting, where we take turns staying up with Kenny beginning at 6am, and both try to sneak in an extra nap when he takes his first of the day, sometime around 8 or 9am. One of the reasons why it's so difficult for us to get anything done on the weekends is because we're so busy trying to find time to sleep.
But I digress.
The point of this blog/rant is to address the feeling of helplessness that invariably hits you when you feel like someone else is raising your child. Although I know that Kenny will always know who his mommy and daddy are, you never want to feel like you're competing with his daycare providers for love or attention. This isn't really a true statement, it's just that it
feels that way sometimes, and in the mind of a frazzled new parent, perception and reality are often at odds.
Furthermore, as a parent of a child in daycare, you wince at the thought that your child's first word, step, or other milestone will occur there instead of with you. Heck, the other day when Kenny sat up for the first time on his own, I was all agog. I asked one of the daycare women if they had seen him do that yet, and was met by a sheepish grin and reply of, "Oh yes, he's getting quite good at it."
Apparently, some parents have requested that the daycare NOT tell them about any such milestones being reached, so it doesn't kill the buzz of seeing those things at home. I completely understand that, but I'm not sure if that's the way I want to go. After all, I may be disappointed that he didn't sit up on his own for the first time at home, but I do want to know he can do it, especially if I can then encourage him to do it more while with us. Then again, there was a certain thrill to thinking I was seeing something being done for the first time...
On the one hand, I am glad for Kenny's daycare experience, as I know it will greatly enhance his social skills, help us with avoiding too much in the way of separation anxiety (knock on wood), definitely assist when the time comes for potty training, and generally let us feel safe and secure knowing that he's okay while we try to earn a few bucks and keep him in Huggies.
On the other hand, I wish there was a way that he only had to go a few times a week, and could spend the other days at home with either Overboard or myself.
So what I'm really saying is, "Anyone out there got some loose change they want to donate to the cause?" You know, a spare million or so? I promise to use it for the boy, and not on hockey gear or Cubs tickets.
