Graceful Parenting in Austin

I must say until now I have never considered polygamy seriously. Mostly, I have been offended and disturbed and I have imagined making trips in the middle of the night through secured compounds to rescue young girls who I would let live with me until they could live on their own as free and independent women. But now, after living through the drama of finding the right day care, I might change my mind.

Because, if I had sister wives, one of us could stay home with our kids. I would know her and trust her. And we would share the same values and parenting styles. And the care would be given in our own loving home. This arrangement doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

Instead, I have two choices. Well, three. I could stay home and that is a choice I considered most seriously of all and I chose to go back to work. My complicated thoughts and deep emotions about that choice would be another post. For today, I’ll focus on my other two choices.

Right now, Baby Girl is in a sweet and loving home day care. She smiles when we drop her off and she smiles when we pick her up. She loves her caregivers and they love her and compliment her and give her kisses all day. There is another girl Baby Girl’s age and they play together and nap together and Baby Girl does whatever the other one does, usually about two weeks later. This home doesn’t feel like day care, it feels like a friend’s house.

But it is a home day care and it is hectic and not very structured and the other day I picked up Baby Girl and she was having a hard time breathing. Not in that way where the doctor uses a stethoscope to listen careful and determine whether or not your baby is wheezing, but in that way where you can hear her wheezing from across the room. And I call her doctor and it was the end of the day already, they said I could come in the next day and I said “MY BABY CAN’T BREATHE!!!!!!!!!!!” and they said “OK!” and we went straight to the office and the doctor was glad we did because Baby Girl needed a breathing treatment right away. And the caregivers hadn’t noticed. I asked as soon as I picked up Baby Girl and she said they hadn’t noticed anything.

And I know something like this can happen. Maybe Baby Girl had just started wheezing while they were diapering other kids or putting toys away and I’m not the Mom who freaks out the first time something happens. Well, OK, there is evidence on this very blog that I did freak out the first time something happened, when Baby Girl scratched her throat and the caregivers didn’t know how it happened. At the time, I decided that babies have accidents, even babies at home with their Moms, so I would be understanding unless three things happened. If three things happened, I would find another place.

The second was a bite. Kids bite. It happens in day care all the time. But they didn’t tell me when I picked up Baby Girl. I noticed it when we got to the car. When I called to ask about it, they said they hadn’t seen it happen, they guessed which kid by the number of teeth imprinted in red on her arm. So, they didn’t see it happen and after Baby Girl cried (she must have cried), they didn’t respond quickly enough to know who bit her.

I was at home with Baby Girl the next day to give more breathing treatments and I called the day cares where we have been on the waiting list since I was pregnant. When we chose the home day care, only one traditional day care would take her, for the others she was still waiting, over a year later. Now the story wasn’t much different. Only one could take her now.

This day care is very structured and official with all the different kinds of accreditation a day care could have. It has all the right developmentally-appropriate toys and formally trained teachers. There are procedures for incidents with reports and immediate phone calls home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is all good but let me tell you, this day care freaks me out! Baby Girl and I went to visit and a teacher was leading a story time and all of the books were about shapes, colors, numbers and other vocabulary lessons. There weren’t any stories like Gossie the young gossling who likes to wear bright red boots ever day, our favorite story at home, each page of every book was about a blue square with four sides (let’s count them, 1…2…3…4) or a red truck with round wheels and square windows or a jungle scene with five (1…2…3…4…5) animals to identify (bear…lion…snake…bird…monkey). And you know what, I think that is just a bunch of crap.

My 13-month-old-baby is a baby and she doesn’t need to know her %$% numbers. The whole American, competitive, my-kid-learned-to-read-when-she-was-1-and-that-is-a-good-thing is just ^%$^%$^$^^$^$^ ridiculous. I want my baby to play. I want her to explore. I want her to hear stories and she’ll pick up vocabulary in her own time but how boring and restrictive and artificial and forced to have every single %^%^$ sentence a teacher says include a ^%$^%$^$% counting lesson!

And besides that, my baby isn’t a toddler. Her age says she belongs in the toddler room, but she doesn’t toddle. She also doesn’t talk or sit up in a chair by herself or take just one nap at noon. And I tell them, my baby is used to naps at 9ish and 2ish and what if she is super tired at 9 and they say they will work with her which is another way to say they will keep her up and give her counting lessons until the hands on the clock read the right time for a nap. And if she wants to nap longer than the official nap ending time, well, then, more counting lessons for her!

I feel so deeply the time in the morning when I will drop her off and I can’t handle it if it doesn’t feel right.

But, I have known myself long enough to know that when I get emotional I can see things in black and white and that isn’t always helpful or accurate. If I sit still for a while and breathe deeply and let go of some of the emotion around the whole thing (which is probably centered around guilt for working in the first place, but that would be that other post again), I know that Baby Girl is going to be fine.

I can’t leave Baby Girl in the home day care. I know the caregivers love the kids in their care and they are kind and capable, but I’ve lost a confidence in them and I can’t get it back. Baby Girl will be fine in the new place. Her two naps have been getting shorter already and we have practiced this weekend keeping her up longer and she has done all right until almost noon. And since Blue Eyes or I pick her up early in the afternoon, she can always take another nap at home. And she is just about to walk, she will any day now. And, when I look back, there wasn’t always official instruction, there was a lot of time to play and explore too.

I’m getting my head and my heart around the idea and I think they will both be all right. It is a good thing too, because I don’t think it is easy to find Unitarian Universalist sister-wives and I hear that can get legally complicated.