Am I Expecting Too Much From My Kid’s Daycare? What I Learned After Months of Second-Guessing
I was leaning against the faded blue door of my 3-year-old Mia’s daycare last fall, holding a lukewarm oat milk latte, scrolling through the daily update app for the third time that hour. The entry from her lead teacher, Ms. Rita, made my chest tighten: 20-minute nap, half-eaten apple slices, fussy during craft time, refused to glue googly eyes to her paper pumpkins. By the time Mia came bounding out, grass stains on her tights and a lollipop stick sticking out of her pocket, I’d already built a whole list of failures in my head: they weren’t engaging her enough, they weren’t enforcing our routine, I’d wasted thousands of dollars on a place that didn’t care about her progress.
I’d spent three months researching daycares before Mia turned two, turning over every Yelp review and parent recommendation until I landed on this one. It’s play-based, has a 1:4 ratio for toddlers, and checks every box I wrote down back then: potty training support, daily outdoor play, art and music every week, transparent updates for working parents. I showed up on day one with a two-page sheet of notes: Mia is allergic to tree nuts, she needs a reminder to drink water every hour, she hates having her hands sticky, please encourage her to try the potty every 90 minutes. I thought if I laid out all my expectations clearly, everything would go smoothly.
It all came to a head in November, when Mia had a screaming meltdown as I was dropping her off, clinging to my shirt and refusing to let go. I stayed 10 minutes past my start time for work, helping Ms. Rita calm her down, and finally blurted out the question I’d been turning over for weeks: Am I expecting too much here?
Ms. Rita leaned against the hallway wall, crossed her arms, and laughed a little, the kind of laugh that’s not mean, just tired and familiar from hearing the same question from hundreds of parents. She told me most parents come in with a list twice as long as mine. They expect daycare to potty train their kid by three, get them counting to 20 by age four, fix their picky eating, and have them ready for kindergarten reading whole sentences. “We do a lot,” she said. “But we have 10 toddlers in this room on any given day. I can reinforce what you’re doing at home. I can remind her to use the potty, I can cheer when she goes. But I can’t stop mid-circle time to sit with her for 10 minutes when she refuses to go, like you can on a Saturday morning when you don’t have a meeting to get to.”
That hit me. I’d been putting all this pressure on daycare to do the work I didn’t have time for during the work week. I’m a full-time marketing manager, my husband travels half the month, and I’d secretly hoped daycare would check off all the developmental boxes so I didn’t have to cram it all into evenings and weekends. I also realized a lot of my expectations weren’t even about Mia. If she came home with a perfect craft, a full tummy, and a good nap, that meant I was doing everything right as a working mom. If anything was off, that meant I’d failed at picking the right care, or failed at being a mom.
After that talk, I crossed out everything on my original expectation list except three things. One: Call or text me immediately if she gets hurt or is upset for more than 10 minutes. Two: Never let her near any tree nuts. Three: Encourage her to drink at least two full cups of water a day. Everything else, I decided, was flexible. I turned off push notifications for the daycare app, so I only check it once a day when I’m waiting to pick her up, instead of 10 times between meetings. For potty training, we worked out a clear system: I do 10 minutes of practice every morning before we leave, I use the same sticker chart at home that they use at daycare, and they just remind her once an hour to go, instead of hovering. That takes the pressure off them, and it’s consistent for Mia.
Last week, I picked Mia up and she had blue paint all down the front of her favorite unicorn sweatshirt, grass in her hair, and a crumpled piece of construction paper with three yellow scribbles in her bag. A year ago, I would have left annoyed, thinking why didn’t they put a smock on her? Why isn’t the craft done properly? This time, I asked her what the scribbles were, and she told me it was a duck that quacks. We taped it to the fridge next to our grocery list, and I threw the sweatshirt in the wash when we got home. Ms. Rita told me she’d spent 20 minutes chasing a butterfly around the playground with two other little boys that afternoon, and that she’d helped the smaller one pick up his blocks when he dropped them. That’s way more useful than a clean sweatshirt or a perfect googly-eye pumpkin, right?
I still have bad days. Last month, I spent an hour spiraling after she came home with a sunburn on her cheeks, because they forgot to reapply sunscreen after outdoor play. I texted Ms. Rita, she apologized, they added a reminder note by the door, and it hasn’t happened again. I still catch myself scrolling the update app and overthinking why she didn’t finish her lunch that day. But I’ve stopped holding daycare to a standard I couldn’t even meet myself, if I was the one watching 10 toddlers all day.
Right now, Mia runs into the daycare building in the morning waving, doesn’t even look back to say goodbye half the time. That tells me everything I need to know. We’re still adjusting, still figuring out what works for all of us. Perfect isn’t the point, anyway.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Am I Expecting Too Much From My Kid’s Daycare