Why Stay-at-Home Moms Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Day Care
My kids have learned a lot from their part-time day care. Social skills, like sharing, are a big one. Potty training goes a lot quicker if there’s peer pressure. My friends say kindergarten goes a lot more smoothly when your kid has already gotten most of the viruses that go around. And I don’t know why this never occurred to me, but day care workers trained to use sign language can get your little one started with communication, too.
I’m starting to think a little day care is a bigger help to mom than I had realized. It gives us more than a few free hours to fold the laundry and shower. It also amounts to having a parenting coach. I know I’ve learned as much from day care as my kids!
Maybe it’s because I waited until my twilight years to spawn, but sometimes I feel like a total idiot with my babies. “They left me alone with these kids,” I want to ask? “Who’s in charge here? Oh, right – me.” Thus, when I started bringing Penny to part-time day care after Abby was born, I leaned on “Teacher Jan” quite a bit.
“Just one more thing,” I’d say before leaving at pick-up. “Do you think she needs …” “How would you suggest …” “How are you handling …” I thought I was being so slick, pretending to support her efforts by getting on board with her program when really I was just stealing her expertise. Jan is fully responsible for Penelope’s ability to trade instead of snatching, for the “5-4-3-2-1” countdown that precedes “1-2-3,” and for the sitting-down-while-eating rule that only sticks when I remind them it was hers in the first place.
If I’d had the kids in Jan’s hands from day one , I could have also asked her “what signs did she learn today?” and gone happily home, able to maximize my quality baby-time with certain knowledge that clapping means “yay,” but very-similar hand-wiping means “all done.”
As a mom alone with my kids, I only use signs sporadically. Both kids enthusiastically picked up whatever I could give them, and made up several of their own; when Penny began to talk, she’d say the word with the sign, and the signed words were among the first she said. It was seriously cool. I used baby signing videos to learn as much as I could, and my step-kids contributed a ton that they remembered. Having a structured setting with playful professionals trained in sign-language could only amplify that positive effect.
Now I just need dayc are for me!
How have you and your kids benefitted from day care? Have your kids learned sign?
About the author Amy Keyishian
can’t understand you when you ask like that — can you ask again in a voice that isn’t whiny?
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