Dear Claire,
This is a day one report from the front lines of stay-at-home Daddy daycare: I just signed you up for daycare. That’s right, with not even 20 minutes of Daddy Daycare time, solo I might add, I walked you over to a daycare centre and signed you up! That is, in a nutshell, my commitment to you!
See here’s the deal, the original idea was to take you on full time for six months, just you me, the stroller, and a park. But then your Dad here had to go off and have a pretty good couple months in which his career went from “who-cares-dot-com” to “okay-you’re-mildly-interesting-what-else-you-got.” And since your Dad here has nothing else to easily hand over as the next great thing, he’s gotta focus his butt off in the coming months/years/lifetime to keep making things happen for us.
I’m starting to think that when I say “sending you off to daycare is best for US” what I mean to say is that sending you off to daycare is best for ME. My thinking is that we don’t want you thinking back saying “all we had growing up was as regular CRT TV, I don’t know why we never had a flat screen jumbo HD ones”. My point: are we sending you off to daycare just for us, or is there a benefit for you too? I can’t begin to tell you how much I hope that YOU actually like going there.
Today in fact, when I was filling out the forms at the daycare centre, you tried to climb over the guard railing to join the other daycare kids all assembled together. I took that as a great sign. I needed that moment like you wouldn’t believe. You genuinely seem to like other kids, so my rationale is that you’ll actually dig this time with everyone as opposed to just hanging out with me in a wading pool for 6 months. We watched together as all the kids played with blocks and painting and just about every fun thing you could imagine and they did so TOGETHER. Maybe this would actually be a really fun excellent way to spend a day? Jesus, I hope so.
True, Your Mother (YM) and I are damn near to constant tears together when we think of you falling, crying, and looking for us to pick you up and hold and love you and tell you its going to be okay. Well, just thinking about right now seems like a dead-end alley that leads to me all crawled up in a crying make-it-go-away-ball. Can we love more than anything in the world AND also send you to daycare so we can get our careers on track?
It seems strange in one way to send a one-year old to school. I know it’s daycare but it looks and feels a lot like school to me. You’re in a room with other kids your age, doing activities together, while adults stand around leading you and watching over you making sure everyone is safe, fair, and engaged. And more to the point, we drop you off at this place and then you have your own separate day, your own separate life, away from us, doing your thing, with your peers … at one years old. I think it all sounds normal until those last few words. But then again this is becoming more normal. Adults have kids, adults need or think they need to go off to a job, they do, and as such the kids gotta go somewhere, so daycare it is (or live-in Nanny, but I think it all adds up to the same thing: Mom and Dad are spending a whack of hours on their own things each day).
But there is something “normal” about that. Back in the old days, like “traditional ways” times, for Aboriginal communities the kids were raised by the grandparents, the old people. Why? Because at your youthful mid-life the parents could be more valuable making hay as it were rather than looking after the kids. The community together took care of the kids, via the old people, so the younger people, the parents, could make the community work. In that way you also had generational knowledge – each generation gets their teachings not by their parents but by a generation before that, from their grandparents and/or elders. So, I think it’s somewhat normal for YM and I to take stock of our lives in our mid-thirties and think to ourselves: “I got 15 great years of work ahead of me where I can make as much hay as possible.” We’re on a track and if we step off the track, which is fine, we’ll most likely never get back on that track again, and yeah maybe we’ll find a new track when you go off to college or highschool and we can start to reclaim our careers, but it most cases it’ll be too late. Or at least we think so.
And there is also this point: I’ve in some way failed us. Your Mother HAS to go back to work. She just has to. One, she makes good money. And better yet, she makes RELIABLE money, every two weeks there’s a drop of cash in her account and bills are paid, like our mortgage for example. Forget whether she wants to go to work and ship you off to daycare, in the sense that she actually really digs her job and her career, I’m talking about the reality here and she HAS to go back. Oh yeah, she also has benefits at her job. Basically, what I’m saying is, YM HAS a job and to keep our family moving one of has to go to a job and she’s the only one with one.
Now, if years ago I had focus then maybe I could be the one with a job, a career of note that equated to income. But alas things didn’t work out in the way. Don’t get me wrong, I love my “job”, it’s just that my “job” is off hours and reluctant pay. Sometimes I get something, but then for months, and I really mean MONTHS, nothing, no income, hello credit card debt. It’s not exactly “sound”. Maybe one day I’ll turn it around, I’ll get it together and YM can have the option of work or no work, but right now? She’s gotta go to work. And if I do turn it around, it’ll be by the time the next kid comes around, your brother maybe, and you’ll figure him to be spoiled.
So, really, what we’re saying here is in the first 20 minutes of daycare today I made a choice. I took the hope of my career working out over being a stay-at-home dad. I mean, that said, it’s not all bad. One, I’m going to walk you over to daycare after breakfast. Two, I’m around the corner so we can hook up anytime. Three, it’s only three days a week, so for two days you get me in a wading pool and then you get two more with me and YM taking you on errands. And if, if you actually like daycare as you seem to LOVE interacting with other kids, then, well, this could work out for everyone here. And if you absolutely crash at daycare and demand and need to be with us, then well, it’ll be me that has to rise to the full-time challenge of baby you.
May I say this though, you are entirely crazy. You are a machine of energy. You’re a joy of giggles, mumbles, and blah-blah-da-da’s. We love you and in two weeks we’re crossing our fingers that a part-time daycare scenario works for you as much as it works for us.
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