Letting Go - Day Care and Babysitter
AdventureDad | October 2In my almost three years as a parent I’ve seen many children related issues drive parents crazy. Illness, terrible two’s, colic, over-protection, and sibling rivalry are just a few of them. My friend Hygiene Chronicles last week told a beautiful story here on The Blogfathers about about not letting go of his son. This reminded me of another difficult issue which every parent must go though. To Let Go. Not because of lack of love or not wanting to be there, simply because it’s a necessity of life. I’m talking about leaving your child at day care or with the babysitter. What can be tougher than leaving your child’s life in another person hands? How do you find someone you can trust? If you’re the parent of a young child and plan on leaving your child with a sitter or at day care you might want to check out this weekend’s article in CNN, “How To Keep The Kids Safe, In Day Care Of With A Saturday-Night Sitter”. The article gives some helpful tips on issues such as safety, security, listening to your child, and treating the care givers with respect. There is no earth-shattering new advice but I aways like to be reminded about these important issues. My son probably doesn’t realize it yet but I have his life in my hands every single day.
Before we had children someone gave us the very bright advice of a child free night each week. Since we have plenty of hobbies this sounded like a great idea. I highly recommend this to all parents. At around 12 months age we headed out each week for different activities. But first we had to find a baby sitter. It’s tough when you don’t have family in town, it’s your first child, and don’t have many friends with children. Through a Gymboree class we were fortunate to find a great girl in her early twenties who turned out to be a baby sitter dream. But regardless of how qualified or nice the people are, I almost have to force myself to leave my child with them. Fortunately, things worked extremely from the beginning and even though we were a little worried the first few times we tried to show her our confidence. At 6.30 pm we left our place for some well needed child free time and returned later in the evening and our baby sitter had then bathed, played, had a late snack, read a story and put our son to sleep. Getting drunk, hang out with friends, romantic dinners, theater, mountain biking are just some of the things we’ve been doing on a weekly basis. I highly recommend trying to find a good sitter regardless if it’s family or a stranger. Being away from your child, together as a couple, for a night every now and then is incredibly relaxing and rejuvenating.
I personally don’t want to let go of my son. I want me or my wife to constantly be there and I never want him to fall off the swing, trip down the stairs, or crash his bicycle. And I don’t want him at day care, I want him at home with us. But that’s of course not only impossible, it would also not prepare him for life. It would be stupid. He could have stayed home and not attended day care but I always thought it was a crucial part of life and important for his social skills. At 18 months he started day care and it’s been fantastic. But I’ve seen problems with day care almost break families. It can be tough being away from your child the whole day if you’re not entirely comfortable with the caretakers or have a child who easily gets ill. Making the day care situation so much tougher is the poor support most receive from their employers and the government. Finances and career currently play a big part ib n what kind of care a child receives and that obviously makes the whole equation even tougher. Leaving a baby with strangers after three months is not something I wish my worst enemy. That part is fortunately easy over here since day care is high quality, virtually free, and guaranteed for everyone. On top of that we’ve go the incredible nice parental leave possibilities which enables mother and father to say home for the first 18 months with pay (although not at the same time).
Right now I feel like I don’t want to let go but I force myself. But will I feel the same way when my children are 18 years old? I have a feeling I will look for every excuse to get the kids out of my house:-)) Take a quick peak at the CNN article, maybe something will help out the day you need day care or a babysitter
My kids are 8, 5, 2, so finding the right babysitter(s) requires serious parental jujitsu. You might think that living at a boarding school as we do, surrounded day and night by teens might make this easier. Quite the opposite. Knowing teens well, combined with two-working-parent guilt has kept us home most nights. But finally, gloriously, my wife and I dumped the kids on the grandparents and took off for a weekend that reminded us why we got into this whole mess in the first place. It’s a must. So I’ve set up the polygraph in the living room, and we begin babysitter interviews this week. Grandma’s a wreck.
Such an important post. I think parents’ needs are as important as kids’ needs. We have a regular date night so we can reconnect as a couple–the couple we were before we had kids. I feel like parents want to have alone time but the thought of finding and hiring someone is daunting. That coupled with guilt can just about guarantee that parents stay home until the kids are old enough to fend for themselves…Once parents commit to finding the right sitter and actually go out and spent time alone, I think they quickly see that it becomes important to their mental health/their relationship etc. It’s precious time that all parents deserve.
Too true, the US lags on supporting child care. I’ve been home with my kids for 4 years. We took a huge financial hit as I had the larger salary. Now that we are looking at sending the 2 children to Waldorf school, the only solution (short of lottery winnings) is for me to go to work full time, put them in child care full time, and save up as much as we can after paying for said child care. I also need to work for my own mental health, and I’m glad that my youngest is 2 years old so that she is already pretty independent. I can’t imagine putting a baby in child care!
I am fortunate our families are very close to home. Thus grandma-grandpa takes care of our small ones. As for daycare, my wife was simply unhappy, so after 8months we sent the child to daycare and the child and the mother were better for it. When we had our second child, we still left the first one at daycare and proceeded in the same manner. I also have good friends who teach their own children and the kids are very well balanced also.
The daycare/non daycare has an impact, but not as much as caring parents all around who can put the child first. It may seem bizarre since I said my spouse was unhappy being all day with the child. Reckognizing it and acting on it although she didn’t want to let go was putting the child first.
Finding good childcare is very, very difficult. I know because I lost a son at the age of 2 when I left him with a nanny. I wish I knew exactly the events that took place that day. If I only had a nanny wireless camera, I wouldn’t be guessing and wondering what happened to my child. I am very passionate about the subject and so empathetic to moms who have to go to work and leave their children in the care of a stranger.