When I went back to work with my 8 year old, we were living in a much bigger town yet I still had problems finding childcare. The first women lasted 1 week. She said he spit up too much and I wasn’t impressed that I had to wake the family up at drop off the final Friday. Having survived that, I made a few calls over the weekend and found another one by Sunday. She was everything I didn’t want: she lived on the other side of town, small house with little rooms and 3 kids of her own, pets everywhere, a large screen television, and she smoked. But what are you going to do? Her references were great, she had photo albums of all the children she had cared for which were impressive, and having made it through the last week I had nothing to lose. I kept an open mind and dropped him off on Monday. On Tuesday, she had a new dog. On Wednesday, her hair was a different color. On Thursday he was planted in front of the TV. On Friday she had no hair. I thought she had cancer and was going through chemotherapy. “No, no, nothing like that,” she said. “I just didn’t like my hair and it was all dried out so I cut it off.” And then the next week her eyes were a different color. This I knew was from contact lenses. I gave up trying to figure her out. As it turns out I learned more about child care from her than I did from any of the books. She had enough experience with babies to know all their quirks. She was great with him, it was good to have him exposed to all the pet dander, and the chaos made for never a dull moment. She would rearrange the rooms on a regular basis so I was never quite sure where he’d be at pick up. And I should add that she only smoked outside and kept him away from the TV after that first time. By the second year she had another baby and I decided to move on.
I found a woman right in my neighborhood with the same name as the last provider. It was meant to be. My husband and I nicknamed her “the Drill Sargent.” She was fabulous. Toys were put away, dishes brought up to the sink, daily schedules, backyard rules. It was everything he needed at that age. And then we moved north and he started preschool while I was pregnant with my second.
It dawned on me this morning that my 5 year old has missed out on all that. While he had loving, caring, and perfectly wonderful providers in the early years, he didn’t have the chaos or structure of the Drill Sargent that my 8 year old had. At the time this seemed like a good thing but in retrospect I think he missed out. I took for granted all the one-on-one attention my 8 year old had and the life skills that came with it. The early providers with my youngest were all sweet women but quiet and cautious. And his early daycare, while structured and creative, maybe was too much so. Now in preschool he’s a happy and well behaved child (after having made a few adjustments) but at home he can be very difficult.
And it’s my fault! I never had discipline problems with my oldest. So I didn’t nip it in the bud early enough with my youngest. I didn’t know! But now I do. There’s so much to take in as a parent. I breezed through all the mechanical stuff like breastfeeding and sleeping and eating when my youngest was a baby but unknowingly had yet to develop a system for being the parent I need to be because my oldest was so well taken care of by the little “village” I created. I’ll get there! Parents take time to grow too I suppose.
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