Every day, when E gets home from daycare, I get a yellow sheet of paper that tells me about his day. At the top is a list of what he's had to eat that day. At the bottom, an outline of his potty habits - at one time, just a list of when she'd changed him and when he'd pooped; more recently its been a small celebration of his new-found ability to go to the potty independently (along with the occasional reminder that he hasn't quite mastered it yet).
The middle is the important part. In the middle of the page is a short list of his activities for the day. Today's reads:
gluing
toys
outside 9:30 to 11
toys
outside 12:30 - 4
visited Papa and Mimi (my caregiver's parents)
Yesterday's reads:
toys
gluing
outside
picnic set
blocks
nap 2 to 3:30 pm
I cling to the middle section. Its as much as I know about how my son spends the majority of his day. As often as I can, I use what Sarah wrote as a way to start a conversation over dinner. Asking him "what did you do today" almost never elicits a response. Being able to say "so you played outside today" or "did you play superheroes with Hannah today" will sometimes at least start a conversation. Sometimes he'll share a story or two about his day. Sometimes they make sense. Other times, the things he says are puzzling or inexplicable, but there isn't much we can do to find out the background to the tales he tells us.
A couple of days ago, I wrote a little bit about blogger Heather Armstrong being invited to the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility. (I also made a comment on a post over on Daddy Types). Today, she published a long post about the flack she's gotten for this invitation. Reading it (and reading it again just now), I guess I have to admit that I'm probably lumped in with the people she's railing against. I've done a bit of Googling to try and figure out what made her so upset, and if there has been a big backlash on the web, I can't seem to find it. This recap is the closest I can find.
I'm not flattering my self here that Heather Armstrong reads my blog, or even knows I exist. That's not my point here. Tonight as I was putting E to bed I was thinking about my day. How I too hit the ground running at 6 am and don't stop until my head hits the pillow at night - often when I fall asleep fully clothed next to my son as he falls asleep. But a lot of what Ms. Armstrong is describing in today's post - the long hours, the pressure of never being able to take a day off -- that's not about being a working mother. Its just about being a mother. The simple and sometimes impulsive act of deciding to have a child puts you into this high pressure world.
I understand her anger at being second guessed, I really do. But even now I've not seen an answer to the original question I posed: who else was there? Was there anyone like me sitting at that table ... someone who reads about her child's day on a yellow sheet of paper instead of experiencing it? Because that is the key difference between the Armstrong workplace and mine. She gets to experience the daily routine of her children. I get to read a recap of my son's day on a yellow sheet of paper.
Showing posts with label daycare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daycare. Show all posts
"mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled." - E Dickinson
March 30, 2010
Heather Armstrong (the author of Dooce) announced yesterday via her Twitter feed that she's been invited to attend The White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility.
I want to state up-front that I'm a big fan of Heather Armstrong, and a big fan of the current White House. (So much so that I'm strongly considering standing outside all night in the rain tonight to get tickets for the President's visit to Portland on Thursday.) In particular, I think her voice has done a lot to educate people about the need for healthcare reform in the US, not to mention how she's raised awareness of post-partum depression. However.... (you knew that was coming, right?)
But Heather Armstrong is also the object of envy of every working mother I know. She is one of the few people I can say honestly "has it all" -- she's doing something she loves and has become very famous for it. She and her husband both work from home, on whatever schedule works for their family. You could easily say that she, almost uniquely, has built a career for herself that is the ultimate in family flexibility. But her very unique set of circumstances are not, I think, replicable by a large number of people in the world.
One of the things that makes me proud to have the Obama family in a leadership position in this country is that they are a real, working family. I do strongly believe that they get it, that they do really think they "understand the challenges" of balancing work and parenting, to use the phrasing from their press release.
But, even before he went to the Senate, they were also highly-educated professionals in leadership careers, who had family and paid in-home caregivers available to them. I doubt Sasha and Malia were ever in daycare (although I don't know that for sure). I think its more likely that they were cared for in their own home, either by their Grandmother or by someone else (a nanny, perhaps) who became, more or less, a part of the family. I know they mean well. But the experience is so different for working mothers who are a bit farther down the pay scale.
The press release says they've invited "labor leaders, CEOs, small business owners, and policy experts" to this forum. I wonder if there will be actual working mothers there? Women who hand their child over to a facility at 7:45 am and pick them up at 5:45 pm, who work blue collar jobs, who work service jobs, the low-income women and families for whom workplace flexibility is most needed. There is a cynical voice in my mind who says that the mothers who most need to have a voice at this summit won't be able to attend, and will, in fact, not ever even realize that anyone was having the conversation.
Every morning, I send my son off to be raised by a woman whom I don't know well and who doesn't really share my personal values. And I count myself lucky, because she's warm and loving, because my son spends his days in a mostly unstructured way, because he gets to run in a pasture and play outside for hours ever day, and (to be frank) because she's very inexpensive. And then I go to work and spend a large part of the day watching other, more fortunate parents as they come into my workplace and share experiences with their own children.
I have to wonder if my voice and experience will be represented?
One interesting note: in searching Flickr for an appropriate photo to add to this post, I noted this: if you search on the word "daycare" you get page after page of child care facilities in third world countries. To get middle-class American images, you have to search on the phrase "preschool". I wonder why that is?
I want to state up-front that I'm a big fan of Heather Armstrong, and a big fan of the current White House. (So much so that I'm strongly considering standing outside all night in the rain tonight to get tickets for the President's visit to Portland on Thursday.) In particular, I think her voice has done a lot to educate people about the need for healthcare reform in the US, not to mention how she's raised awareness of post-partum depression. However.... (you knew that was coming, right?)
But Heather Armstrong is also the object of envy of every working mother I know. She is one of the few people I can say honestly "has it all" -- she's doing something she loves and has become very famous for it. She and her husband both work from home, on whatever schedule works for their family. You could easily say that she, almost uniquely, has built a career for herself that is the ultimate in family flexibility. But her very unique set of circumstances are not, I think, replicable by a large number of people in the world.
One of the things that makes me proud to have the Obama family in a leadership position in this country is that they are a real, working family. I do strongly believe that they get it, that they do really think they "understand the challenges" of balancing work and parenting, to use the phrasing from their press release.
But, even before he went to the Senate, they were also highly-educated professionals in leadership careers, who had family and paid in-home caregivers available to them. I doubt Sasha and Malia were ever in daycare (although I don't know that for sure). I think its more likely that they were cared for in their own home, either by their Grandmother or by someone else (a nanny, perhaps) who became, more or less, a part of the family. I know they mean well. But the experience is so different for working mothers who are a bit farther down the pay scale.
The press release says they've invited "labor leaders, CEOs, small business owners, and policy experts" to this forum. I wonder if there will be actual working mothers there? Women who hand their child over to a facility at 7:45 am and pick them up at 5:45 pm, who work blue collar jobs, who work service jobs, the low-income women and families for whom workplace flexibility is most needed. There is a cynical voice in my mind who says that the mothers who most need to have a voice at this summit won't be able to attend, and will, in fact, not ever even realize that anyone was having the conversation.
Every morning, I send my son off to be raised by a woman whom I don't know well and who doesn't really share my personal values. And I count myself lucky, because she's warm and loving, because my son spends his days in a mostly unstructured way, because he gets to run in a pasture and play outside for hours ever day, and (to be frank) because she's very inexpensive. And then I go to work and spend a large part of the day watching other, more fortunate parents as they come into my workplace and share experiences with their own children.
I have to wonder if my voice and experience will be represented?
One interesting note: in searching Flickr for an appropriate photo to add to this post, I noted this: if you search on the word "daycare" you get page after page of child care facilities in third world countries. To get middle-class American images, you have to search on the phrase "preschool". I wonder why that is?
“All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent.” - Benjamin Spock
April 7, 2009
During the winter, I must admit that we sometimes take our son to the local outlet of a National Chain Restaurant that has a giant play structure inside. Perhaps I should feel guilty for feeding my son four or five chemically altered chicken nuggets, but that guilt is heavily balanced by the opportunity for him to run and climb and swing on the giant playground equipment for an hour or two in the dead of winter, when its 14 degrees and there is two feet of snow on the ground.
The last time we were there, as we were leaving, we passed a man who was hauling a weeping child out by the arm.
"If you let anyone hit you again," the man said to the boy, "I'll punch you in the mouth."
My husband's mother (my son's beloved Mimi) spanked her boys with a wooden spoon. The boys laugh about it now; they were a military family and moved often - the boys love to tell the story of how once, when moving, their mother found a cache of wooden spoons - dozens, perhaps - that they boys had hidden away, in the forlorn hope that if there were no spoons to be found there would be no spankings.
I feel like, over the past few days, I've been running into spanking everywhere I look. Matt Haughey (noted blogger but not normally a parenting blogger) wrote earlier this week about how his parents would "whip" him and his brother with a belt, and how his grandmother, too, was a feared wielder of the wooden spoon. Ohio is considering a bill to outlaw "paddling" in public schools, and I find myself wondering how, exactly, that hadn't been done years ago. I was shocked to learn that although the State has a "limited ban" six school districts reported 110 paddlings of students during 2007-08 school year.
I like to think that we, as a society, have moved past hitting children as punishment, but I know it isn't true. I remember, long before our son was born, having dinner with another couple, friends who had two small daughters. Both parents (she a nurse and he a teacher) told us that they had spanked the girls, that sometimes "a good swat on the bottom" was the only way to teach. I remember glancing at Josh nervously during that conversation, realizing that we did not know these people as well as we thought we did, wondering where else our philosophies of living diverged. Before my son was born, my husband told me that he would "consider" spanking our child (natural, I suppose, as a child of a spanker himself) if the offense was grave enough. Now, though, I know he can't imagine himself ever doing it, ever pulling our small son over his lap, ever hitting our son for any reason. I'm confident in that, confident that neither of us would ever do it.
I found out recently, however, that Sarah, the woman who cares for our son during the day in her home, spanks her daughter. One of the reasons that the daughter (Hannah) gets spanked is because she sometimes bites my son.
I don't feel like he's in danger there. Sarah has gone through the process to become a certified in-home daycare provider, and I know she's taken classes and has random in home visits. I also know that Sarah is fairly religious (enough so that she has faith-promoting bumper stickers on her car), and that spanking is somewhat more common in highly religious households. Mostly, I guess, I just don't get it. She has a degree in early childhood education. She's warm and nurturing with the children in her care, and my son is comfortable there. I have no thoughts that she would ever hit him or hurt him in any way.
Now I'm faced with a quandary. Its not up to me to tell her how to parent her own child. We tried once before to move him out of her care (with disastrous results). And, of course, there is the issue that we're not exactly in a position right now to afford an inevitably more expensive childcare solution her "in the city". So what do I do? What would you do?
The last time we were there, as we were leaving, we passed a man who was hauling a weeping child out by the arm.
"If you let anyone hit you again," the man said to the boy, "I'll punch you in the mouth."
My husband's mother (my son's beloved Mimi) spanked her boys with a wooden spoon. The boys laugh about it now; they were a military family and moved often - the boys love to tell the story of how once, when moving, their mother found a cache of wooden spoons - dozens, perhaps - that they boys had hidden away, in the forlorn hope that if there were no spoons to be found there would be no spankings.
I feel like, over the past few days, I've been running into spanking everywhere I look. Matt Haughey (noted blogger but not normally a parenting blogger) wrote earlier this week about how his parents would "whip" him and his brother with a belt, and how his grandmother, too, was a feared wielder of the wooden spoon. Ohio is considering a bill to outlaw "paddling" in public schools, and I find myself wondering how, exactly, that hadn't been done years ago. I was shocked to learn that although the State has a "limited ban" six school districts reported 110 paddlings of students during 2007-08 school year.
I like to think that we, as a society, have moved past hitting children as punishment, but I know it isn't true. I remember, long before our son was born, having dinner with another couple, friends who had two small daughters. Both parents (she a nurse and he a teacher) told us that they had spanked the girls, that sometimes "a good swat on the bottom" was the only way to teach. I remember glancing at Josh nervously during that conversation, realizing that we did not know these people as well as we thought we did, wondering where else our philosophies of living diverged. Before my son was born, my husband told me that he would "consider" spanking our child (natural, I suppose, as a child of a spanker himself) if the offense was grave enough. Now, though, I know he can't imagine himself ever doing it, ever pulling our small son over his lap, ever hitting our son for any reason. I'm confident in that, confident that neither of us would ever do it.
I found out recently, however, that Sarah, the woman who cares for our son during the day in her home, spanks her daughter. One of the reasons that the daughter (Hannah) gets spanked is because she sometimes bites my son.
I don't feel like he's in danger there. Sarah has gone through the process to become a certified in-home daycare provider, and I know she's taken classes and has random in home visits. I also know that Sarah is fairly religious (enough so that she has faith-promoting bumper stickers on her car), and that spanking is somewhat more common in highly religious households. Mostly, I guess, I just don't get it. She has a degree in early childhood education. She's warm and nurturing with the children in her care, and my son is comfortable there. I have no thoughts that she would ever hit him or hurt him in any way.
Now I'm faced with a quandary. Its not up to me to tell her how to parent her own child. We tried once before to move him out of her care (with disastrous results). And, of course, there is the issue that we're not exactly in a position right now to afford an inevitably more expensive childcare solution her "in the city". So what do I do? What would you do?
"I shut my eyes in order to see." - Paul Gauguin
March 20, 2009
sprung
Originally uploaded by Robert S. Donovan (booleansplit)
Just a couple of links (and a great and interesting image via Robert S. Donovan on Flickr) for you on this beautiful Friday. I was admiring the cavalcade of tulips in the supermarket yesterday, but as always its hard to take my own photos when your two-year-old wants to hold hands while running.
In theory, today is the first day of spring. Its cold here today, but the snow is slowly melting and I have some hope that by next week or so we'll be able to start going to the playground again.
I don't know if there is a connection between these two links or not. You tell me.
Presidential parenting: Good mothers lead by example
Is the opt-out revolution coming to an end?
-- Let me just say here that I was so very pleased that the second comment caught my thoughts exactly: "Opt out would imply options, would it not?" Of all the dozens families with children I know, exactly four have been able to make the choice to have one parent opt-out of working. In two families, its the traditional "professional dad and stay-at-home mom" profile. In one, the mom had the high paying job and the dad was home when the kids were small. And in one, the family can afford to have one parent stay home because both partners had worked at high paying jobs and the were able to bank and invest enough to plan for the future.
I suppose someone could say that Michelle Obama is part of the "opt-out" revolution: she was, after all, a highly-paid executive who left her job to (as some blogs would tell you) "trail along" after her husband and take care of their home and family. (Of course, another view of being First Lady would be that its the highest-profile and most responsible volunteer position in the US. But I digress.)
But for most families, its not a question of opting out any more. Its a question of balance - two parents working at (at least) two jobs, or one parent (either parent) staying at home and one in the workforce. The balance of "we want another child" against "can we afford to have another child" or the balance of "I want a stay-at-home parent with my child" vs "how to we afford to have one parent at home" vs "which parent has the skills and education to get the best-paying job."
I guess I've never seen this opt-out revolution she speaks of. I've only seen families that try to make the best choices for themselves.
Today's post at Antique Mommy talks about a photo of her mother-in-law, and how "[w]hen her husband encouraged her to sell Tupperware to make a little mad money, she discovered that she liked it. And she was good at it — so good that she won a car and quickly rose through the ranks to become a sales director." Then tragedy struck her family, and her husband was killed, and what had formerly been "mad money" was now the family's sole means of support. (I can't imagine how good you'd have to be at selling Tupperware to support a family of four. I couldn't do it.) Some might say that it was a stroke of good fortune that she had kept her toe in the water, so to speak. But this woman's story also speaks to so many other things: how work brings fulfillment, recognition, and rewards. How its good to have some backup skills in case of disaster (death being the worst, of course, but for many families the impact of a job-loss can be as or more economically devastating than a death). But, of course, no one was writing about mothers like AM's MIL in the papers back then. It wasn't a "trend". It was just families doing what they wanted or needed to do.
I get so tired of the fallacy that "working mothers" are a new phenomenon, or that there has been some "opting revolution" in the past decade or two. In some families, both parents have always worked. On the farm, maybe, or in the store, or with mom doing in-home parties or taking on piece work, but both parents were contributing to the finances of the family. In other families, only one parent was the wage-earner. In yet other families, the roles shifted depending on circumstance. What has changed -- what the fundamental change is that no one really talks about much -- is the way the culture has changed to make things less easy and hospitable for two-earner families. The media wants to make hay out of the "mommy wars" - working parents vs. stay at homes. We're encouraged to envy or criticize those on the other side of the fence, rather than support them. Our sense of community as parents has vanished and now its all about making the "right" choices, as though only one set of choices were the correct one.
"Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy." - Gandhi
July 18, 2008
The website UKFamily.co.uk (a division of the Walt Disney Company) has apparently released the following survey findings (which I can't actually find on their site): Two-thirds of working mothers with young children would like to give up work to care for their family. Of course the UK press has picked this up with headlines like 62 per cent of working mums 'want to quit job for a normal family life' (Daily Mail) and Working Brit parents don't even have five minutes a day with their kids (ANI).
"According to Life coach Suzy Greaves, the survey revealed just how many think that they could be better parents if only they had more time on their hands.
"This research shows just how many of us think we'd be a 'better parent' if we had more time. We feel guilty about everything - the amount of time we spend at work, the lack of time we have to play with our children and the amount of time our kids spend in childcare," Greaves said.
"As a result, many working parents, especially mums, are running themselves ragged trying to overcompensate.
"It's time for us to stop being self-critical and let go of our guilt - an absolutely useless emotion - and then shelve some of the tasks that take up so much of our time.
"It really doesn't matter if everything isn't crisply ironed or the toys all put away. Instead, we parents should give ourselves a pat on the back for the amazing amount we do achieve.
"Let's model happiness to our kids instead of guilt and martyrdom," she added."
I feel like I should add some commentary there, but I just can't.
Yep, two posts today. Amazing.
"The drug of emotional attachment has destroyed me, as it has destroyed the whole world.” - Sri Guru Granth Sahib
May 27, 2008
I hope you enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend. We did; we went camping in Vermont. Had a wonderful time.
For your pleasure, here is a great article about children's attachment to parents and child-care providers: When Children Treat The Child Care Provider Like Mom
“Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.” -- Henri de Lubac
May 22, 2008
For some crazy reason, last week, the week that had no format, no schedule, no routine, full of changes and adaptations every single day, that week went fine.
This week, the week where E is supposed to be "back on schedule" - back to daycare, back to his regular schedule, this week is a mess.
He's refusing to nap at daycare. He's hitting everyone (me, his father, the other kids at Daycare, Sarah), and sometimes does this thing where he turns into a writhing ball of flailing arms and legs, often lying on his back and kicking and holding a stuffed animal in each and flinging them around with wild abandon. He doesn't seem upset when he's in dervish mode - in fact, I think he's doing it because its fun - but its a little weird and scary to watch. I'm trying to chalk it up to being (almost) two, but his father voiced to me a concern yesterday that "maybe its something he's eating that makes him go crazy like that."
Perhaps. But this morning he woke up at five fifteen, raring to go, begging for milk - no, juice - no, milk - no, juice - Oh! the world is ending - Milk! Juice! Milk!, and then commenced to thrash around on the bed in this same wild way, rabbit in one hand, elephant in the other, kicking his legs and slamming the animals together. At five fifteen. In the morning.
I finally got him a drink and got him to snuggle in the bed with me, but he never fell back asleep. By seven fifteen he was up and dressed and ready to go, but rubbing his eyes and being grumpy and sleepy already. I don't envy Sarah for her day with him. We get a note back from her every day, outlining what he ate and how many diapers and what they did for the day, and on Monday the note said read "Tough day today. As M (one of the other toddlers) said "E was a wild man today."
I can't help but believe that he misses being at home.
This weekend we're going camping in Vermont. Four days of family and friends togetherness time. I wonder if, by Sunday or so, I'll have a different, sunnier boy on my hands. And I wonder if, come Tuesday or Thursday of next week, he'll be back to dervish mode again.
"Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge." -- Paul Gauguin
May 13, 2008
I recently stumbled across SouleMama, which is a wildly interesting blog - moreso because she lives here in Portland and writes about a lot of things that are very familiar to me (like her current post about the Salvation Army Fabric Sale, for instance).
Days one and two of the "daycare vacation" have gone quite well. My mother was here looking after E (with her dog, Nick, with whom E is wildly in love). Tomorrow E is home all day with Daddy, and Thursday its my turn. I can't wait for my turn. Its a chance to live my fantasy life as a Mamma more like Soulemama -- an earth mother, a bread baker, a maker of things.
When I was home on my maternity leave - a moment and a lifetime ago now, it seems - I made myself crazy because I couldn't seem to do anything. I vividly remember the day I went back to work. I got to the stop sign at the corner and actually yelled "Yipee!" out loud, because I was so happy, at that moment, to be going back to the world of adults. My infant son was beautiful, but (truth to be told) a trifle dull. But my toddler son - so bright, so full of words, so interested in things, so loving - he's a person.
These past two days, instead of E leaving at 730 with is father, he and I have been home together for two hours before my mother arrived to watch him. This morning we played with blocks. Yesterday we touched our noses for fifteen minutes, then talked about elbows and knees. I'm starting to think that finding a way to have those two hours every morning would make a huge difference in my life, but doing that would involve so much upheaval for him that I'm reluctant to do it.
Having my mother here for two days has also been an interesting experiment in Free Range Parenting. She has a whole different set of expectations about what his abilities (and responsibilities) should be. And I learned, I think, that my expectations of him and his abilities should be more like hers. I have to stop thinking of him as "the baby". He's a toddler now, and more independent by the day.
“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.” - Aldous Huxley
May 8, 2008
My son got in the tub himself last night. In his diaper. And socks. Yes, its true -- I let my son take his bath with his socks on.
I've been trying to reinforce the idea that "no means no". The logical and consistent outcome of this is that when he flatly states "no" I have to at least attempt honor that. Even if it means that he gets in the tub with his socks on and then takes them off himself when he finds his sodden socks to be a hindrance. I find this to be doubly important when it comes to his willingness to allow anyone else to remove his clothing. Especially his diaper. It is very important to me that he understand clearly that no one is allowed to remove his diaper without his permission.
If his diaper seems wet or soiled, we'll always ask him if we can change him ("Buddy, can we change your diaper?"). He's very good about telling us when there is poop in his diaper and almost always asks to be changed right away. Wet pants are another case .... he doesn't seem to mind them, so sometimes he'll say "no" to having his diaper changed - because, perhaps, he doesn't want to be interrupted in whatever toddler task he's undertaking (or sometimes just because its cold) - I'm happy to wait. When he's uncomfortable he'll let us know, and then we'll get him dry pants. With his permission.
Eventually we should probably begin to toilet train him. Hannah, our caregiver's daughter, is currently being trained (she's about three years old), so the word "Potty" and the concept of using the toilet are coming into his range of ideas. He's seen both his father and I use the toilet (and, I understand, his father has narrowly avoided peeing on E's head on more than one occasion when E got a bit too ... curious). His father has even gone so far as to sit E up on the toilet, at E's request.
But, honestly, I'm kind of hoping we can put toilet training off for another few months, at least.
Every August, we attend a living history festival for two weeks, and camp. This time in camp seems like a perfect opportunity to toilet train our son. We'll be outdoors, so I can let him run without diapers without having to worry about mopping up pools. We'll be in a physically close environment, so I'll never have to be a few steps from a potty without dragging it all over the house with us. (A friend's daughter loved to drag her potty into the living room and watch TV while sitting on it. That's not going to fly in our house.) And, most basically, if we can wait until our August Vacation, it means I'll get to toilet train him myself.
He took his first steps at Sarah's house. Probably has had many other "firsts" there as well, but she is kind enough not to tell me. Toilet training is such an intimate, delicate thing. Not only does it seem like a strange thing to ask a caregiver to be responsible for -- please housebreak my child, thank you -- but it seems, to me, to be a mother's duty. My duty. And so we'll keep talking about the potty and leaving him in diapers and letting him get the hang of dressing (and undressing) himself and asking permission to change his diaper.
And waiting for summer to come. So I can do my duty by him.
"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." - J. Campbell
May 1, 2008
As much as I do try (daily) to remind myself of all the upsides to having E in an in-home care situations, there are sometimes downsides as well. Vacation time is one of those.
We've known since the middle of last year that Sarah, our care provider, was planning on taking two weeks of vacation in 2008: the week of May 12th and a week in August. The August week isn't a problem for us (we're on vacation ourselves, anyhow), and we've sorted out a plan for the May week (Josh and I each take one day off, my mother drives down to watch him two days, he spends one day with Josh's dad). But now Sarah has thrown a wrench in the works, and its a frustration.
She wants to take an extra week, in June. She has basically offered us three options: make other arrangements and we don't need to pay her; bring E to her house where she will arrange for "someone else" to cover her for that week (but we don't know who, and, in the past, at least once she's had her 19 year old cousin cover for an hour, which I was not ok with), or decline to give her permission to go (since we didn't know about this in advance). Well, far be it from us to be the bad guys, so we're going for the "make other arrangements" option, but its frustrating. (Partly its frustrating because I started this new job in February and haven't yet accrued much vacation time, but even if I had five or six weeks of vacation time it would still be frustrating, because its not my choice.)
In a center, of course, this wouldn't have been an issue - staff would take vacation and then come back, and although E's routine would be changed it would not be totally interrupted. E is, by now (having been "in care" since he was 8 weeks old) used to the routine of "going bye-bye" each day. He's getting used to weekends, but things like this - extra days or changes in his schedule - can really throw him off and make him into cranky savage toddler. I think by the end of this week in May he might very well be a total mess.
I've spent a good deal of time this week looking for some alternate solution - checking to see if our local YMCA can take him for a full week, for example, or seeing if we could find someone trustworthy to care for him in-home for a week, but so far, no luck.
On the other hand, a patchwork solution is better than no solution at all. I'm constantly aware of how lucky we are, to have such a great support network. I'm always so painfully aware of all those folks who do not have the resources we have.
And, of course, it means I get to spend a spring day doing an assortment of nothing with my favorite person on Earth. And what can be wrong with that?
"A question may be asked, ‘Will mothers have their children in eternity?' Yes! Yes! Mothers, you shall have your children." - Joseph Smith
April 22, 2008
Walther acknowledged the nutritional and bonding benefits of breast-feeding. "But every day in this country, we have mothers who go back to work after six weeks of maternity leave," she said." - Texas Judge Barbara Walther, as quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune
When my son was eight weeks old, I left him at the home of a total stranger -- a woman I had met only the day before -- in hopes that she would love him and care for him as I would. It was easily the most terrifying moment of my life.
When we decided to have a baby, we knew this day would come. I knew that I would only have a few short weeks with him as a newborn before I needed to return to work as our family's primary wage-earner. At the time we made this choice, though, we had no idea what it really meant. I suppose you could say that we did have other choices, but none of those were good choices - I could have quit my job and we could have sold the house and tried to live on my husband's salary alone, but we probably would have quickly ended up on welfare. My husband could have quit his job, but that would leave us with no affordable insurance option. We could have chosen not to have a child. (This last would have been the least selfish, from a certain point of view.) At the time, at that moment, on that first day, I was at peace with the decision we made, but as time has rolled on and I've realized all that my son and I have missed and lost I'm less and less comfortable with it.
Parents like us, with a child in full-time daycare, are actually a minority in the US. In 2005, 61% of preschool children spent some time each day in "non-parental" care, but only 36% of those children were cared for outside the home or by someone not related to the child (source). Of all the mothers I know with children under the age of 6, I am the only mother who is working full time and has a child in full time daycare. To say that I'm jealous of those other mothers is an understatement. Every day when E walks down the stairs to go off with his father to Sarah's house, its like a stone in my belly. He sees it as his normal routine, and can get flustered on days when he doesn't go. I die a little more inside each morning as I watch him leave.
Every other issue of the FLDS case aside, what has made me so angry about Judge Walter's comment as quoted is that she seems to view leaving a baby in care at 6 weeks as normal. You already know, of course, that in other (I was tempted to say "civilized") countries they don't give new mothers' six or eight weeks leave. In Canada I believe the standard is 37 weeks. In the UK, its 52 weeks. In Sweden, 18 months. In most countries in Africa, 14 weeks. (Wikipedia to the rescue - I don't have to list them for you, here's a handy chart.
Judge Walter, just because women do this every day doesn't make it ok and it certainly doesn't make it the best choice for any child. We do it, mostly, because we are forced by circumstances, just as these FLDS mothers are. Your comment, which has been published in just about every newspaper in this nation, reinforces to the public at large the ideas that a) breastfeeding is some kind of luxury; and b) that there is nothing at all broken about the current support system (or lack thereof) for mothers and families in this country. Perhaps your intended meaning was "it happens every day and kids survive it". Yes, they do. But the losses sustained for the mothers and babies cannot be balanced in any accounting.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. - Santayana
April 9, 2008
I got to be that parent this morning. You know the one. The one who sends her sick, screaming child off to daycare while she and her spouse both trundle off to work. You know the one. The uncaring, rude one. The one about whom other parents say "What could she have been thinking?"
In my defense, however, he asked to go. And he's not all that sick - just a little sniffle (that he caught from my care provider's daughter) and a severe case of diaper rash. But in getting him dressed this morning, you'd think the world was coming to an end.
E has never really suffered from diaper rash. We had one tiny patch of it last summer, but otherwise nothing. I have a tube of Boudreaux's Butt Paste that I got at my baby shower that we'd never opened, and that was the only "ointment" in the house. Over the last three days, however, E has developed the most epic case of diaper rash you can imagine. A red, raw bottom that clearly hurts him.
Although E was restless and cranky last night, this morning he was ok until I took off his diaper and put the ointment on. The application of the ointment seemed to be agony for him (his father had to hold his upper body and feet while I put it on), and then he fought and fought and fought against his diaper. Once we had the diaper on, he kept pulling and tugging at it -- "Pooop," he wailed. "Pooop. Pooooop. Poooooooooooop."
"No poop, honey," I told him, "its the medicine. The medicine will make it feel better."
"Poooooooooooop!" More wailing and tugging on his diaper. Then he grabbed my hand and directed it to his bottom. "Poop!" E looked at me with big, pleading eyes. Mamma, there is something yucky in my diaper. Why won't you clean it up?
Finally, knowing the time was ticking by, I laid him back down and decided to remove the ointment that was causing him so much distress. Then, as he's laying on his back and I'm removing his diaper, he sneezed.
And oh! what a sneeze. Panic and consternation from the little boy - clearly his head has just exploded. Tiny hands fly up to wipe away the goo. He opens his mouth to cry out and the mucus from his nose drips directly into the back of his throat, gagging him. I have no choice but to pick him up. He's naked, covered in snot and diaper cream, wailing. There is snot in his mouth, on his hands, all over his face, and in his hair (and, shortly, in mine). He's slippery and hard to hold on to.
All his wants in the world is his dadda, but Daddy is dressed for work and can't pick him up.
Josh and I look at each other. "I'll stay home with him," I say in a somewhat unconvincing tone.
"Can you?"
"Well, not really, no. It would cause a disaster. But we can't send him to Sarah's like this."
Having just started a new job two months ago, I have no sick time accrued, plus I have work that urgently needs to be completed today or disaster will strike, but it is abundantly clear that no one other than his parents should be asked to deal with the wailing, frustrated, miserable toddler I hold in my arms.
"No, I'll stay home," Josh says, equally unconvincingly. He has plenty of sick time, but given that its now nearly 7:30 am it will be difficult to find someone to cover the desk for him on such short notice.
We debate our options (asking one of our parents to watch him, splitting the day), and find that there aren't any. All the while my naked, slimy, squirming, miserable son wails and thrashes in my arms. He desperately wants "down" but I don't want to put him down on the floor until I've cleaned him up, at least a little.
Eventually, E calms down, lets me wrap him in a towel, and we get him cleaned up. Dad has the bright idea of putting some Neosporin on E's bottom, since it has an analgesic in it, and after a moment or two that seems to do the trick. E points towards the door. "Go go bye? Go go bye?"
By this point, E won't let me touch him. (I'm certain he thinks I'm just going to smear some other revolting substance on him.) He picks up his discarded shirt and carries it to his father, all the time repeating "Go go bye?" in an increasingly insistent tone. Dad has E dressed in a flash, and before I know it they're going down the stairs and E is waiving bye-bye to me and blowing kisses as he does every morning.
After they left (I could hear another struggle going on out by the car, but I didn't look out the window to check. I'm assuming E wanted nothing to do with his car-seat.) I sat on the steps for about ten minutes, hoping we'd done the right thing. Tonight when they get home I'll give him an overdue bath, then let him run around pantsless for a while. Hopefully that will encourage things to clear up, at least some.
But now I'm one of "those" parents. And I hope I won't be judged too harshly for it when its nap-time and my son is screaming as his diaper is changed.
Because I'm too busy judging myself harshly, thank you very much.
"Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more." - Martin Luther
March 14, 2008
Every day we get a note from Sarah, E's care provider, telling us what he did that day. Normally, its just a list of activities (blocks, dolls, puzzles, craft, outside, books, etc.) with notes on what he ate, what time his nap was, and his ... diaper activities.
For the past couple of days, however, we've been hearing about cows.
Sarah's parents live on a working dairy farm next door to Sarah's house. (I suspect that Sarah and her husband built on land that her parents gave them, actually. Also, Sarah's cousin lives in the basement of their house, so its a real family compound.) For the past couple of days, since the weather has been improving, her notes have started including messages about cows.
"Went for a walk and saw cows."
"Outside. Saw Cows."
Then yesterday - "Went for a walk and saw cows. Evan patted a cow on the head. Cow ate some hay from Evan's hand, but it scared him." (Well, yeah. Cows eating out of my hand kind of scare me, too.)
When reading that last night I was such a bundle of conflict. It is, after all, gr
One other bit of excitement last night ... E and I played Ring around the Rosy for a long while, which he asked me to do by saying something that sounded a lot like "asses, asses" then grabbing my hand and falling to the floor. At the moment he realized that I had figured out what he was asking, and realized that I was going to play his favorite game with him, he gave himself over into a total toddler-dance spasm of glee. It was so great. We played for ages, and got some stuffed toys involved to make the circle bigger. He's a little quick on the trigger for the falling down part, but is doing great on the song ("asses" aside).
Of course, being a web-geek, I had to fnd that the game has a great Wikipedia page, including a debunking of the idea that the rhyme references the plague, and a passing reference to Eddie Izzard.
Saturday I think our plan revolves totally around getting E into his big boy bed. So, a trip to Marden's to buy a new mattress and then, I think, tools and swearing. Its a good thing the crib converts to a headboard/footboard for a twin bed, otherwise I would be feeling very guilty that we got such a small amount of use out of it.
'Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.' - P K Dick
March 13, 2008
I have slowly started to noodle around with the idea that as soon as the car payment goes away we might be able to survive on my (two-job) income alone, and Josh could stay home full-time with young Mr. E. There are some notable obstacles to overcome in this plan (most significantly the fact that Josh's job provides us with some really stellar health insurance), but I'm at the point where I've noodled it enough that I felt comfortable asking Josh how he felt about the idea.
"I'd feel inadequate," was his reply.
This was not the reply I'd expected, and I rushed to explain to him all the ways in which his not being the "breadwinner" for our family wouldn't be an issue for me.
"No, no, no," he clarified, "I'd feel inadequate to the job of staying home with him. I'm not sure what we would do and I'm afraid we would just end up with him sitting on my lap watching TV all day. Plus, I'd feel bad that he wouldn't get to spend time with other kids."
Well, I don't think that they'd spend up watching TV all day (although it might be more than I'd like), but the "other kids" point is an interesting one. One of the upsides of having E in daycare is that he gets to have two "sorta-siblings". M and H are both girls, and both about ten months older than E is, but he loves them and they love him, and being with them day in and day out does teach him things about interacting with other people that he couldn't learn by, say, just attending a "mommy and me" type exercise class for one or two days per week.
When I have the worst of my daycare angst, I must try to remember these sorts of things. That despite the fact I wish he were with me every moment of every day there are certain benefits from being "in care" that he just can't get at home.
“There is never enough time, unless you’re serving it” – M. Forbes
March 11, 2008
Mathematically, this is my son’s life
I’ve been doing some math. Mathematically, this is my son’s life: Out of 168 hours in a week, he spends….
Last Week “everything else” Included:
Those remaining 11.5 hours were the time he was at home and awake with both of us there. That time basically represents Saturday and Sunday mornings, when we get up, eat breakfast, maybe watch a little Big Big World or perhaps E will convince me to show him the “Tivo Guy” animation over and over and over again. Then we’ll play with toys and read books. Or maybe we’ll go up to his room and make a game of some chore, like putting laundry away. Eventually we’ll get him dressed, and Josh and I will need to take our showers and get dressed. For this particular week, his S/S nap times took place during the errand running and time at Grandmas, but in other weeks that time needs to include E’s nap time as well. (When he’s at home with us for an entire weekend day, family nap time with books and snuggles can be a warm and wonderful treat.) 11.5 hours is 6.8% of E’s week. But in between the working and the groceries and the attempt to have a richer life involving other people (for both us and him), its all there is left.
Some Questions You Just Know Never To Ask
I actually started this exercise to assure myself that he does spend more time with us than he does with his daytime care provider, and he does, but just by a slim edge – 45 hours a week with her vs. a total of 53 hours per week when he is in the company of at least one parent. Of course, he spends stable chunks of time with Sarah and the little girls: 9 hours per day, 5 days per week, (on a side note, I also just realized as part of this exercise that we pay her less than half of minimum wage per hour for the time he is with her – and that includes two meals she provides each day! – but it’s the rate she’s asking and she gets to be at home with her own daughter, so I must not feel guilty about that), whereas his time with us is broken up into chunks and bits and dribs and drabs. This partitioning of our time with him is, above all things, is what I hate about the current schedule. He, of course, seems none the worse for wear, but who really knows how he regards the adults in his life? He knows that I am Mamma, and that Josh is Daddy. I don’t know what he calls Sarah and I don’t want to know. I suspect he calls her Mamma too, at least some of the time. It’s a question we just prefer not to ask.
"It's like having a Parent Die"
When I attempted to change his care situation last fall to such devastating effect, someone mentioned to me that abruptly taking him away from Sarah was “like having a parent die.” The comment offended me at the time, but with reflection I’ve come to realize that it’s the truth. Sarah, for better or worse, is another mother to him. H and M (the two girls he’s in care with – H is Sarah’s daughter) are his part-time siblings. I’ve always known that Sarah’s values will have as much impact on his upbringing as our own do, and the upside of having him in her home every day is that I’m sure that she’s warm and loving and moral and that it’s a non-harmful environment for him. This is the big pitfall of putting a child in care – you are, in fact, having him raised by a carefully chosen stranger. It’s a fortunate feature of the human psyche that love is a bottomless well (and more so in babies, I truly believe, who love completely and unconditionally, with their entire bodies and souls, reserving nothing), so I don’t have to worry about him loving Sarah “more”. If I had to guess, I would say that he knows he belongs with us because … well, because we smell like his parents should smell, but the mystery of what the realities of the world are to a toddler are broad and deep.
“We’ve been told we can have it all. The truth of the matter is that you can’t. You can’t have it all at the same time.” – Michelle Obama
My resolution for the spring is to find more time that we’re together as a family. I will admit that last week was sort of an aberration – this week we’re in now, for example, I have both weekend days off and Josh and I will be home together at least two and possibly three weeknight evenings. The question becomes what to do with the time we have. The temptation is to try and make that time “special” – to go places and do things on weekend days, to play special games or eat special meals on weeknights. The better answer is probably just to emphasize the idea that we are together, that we love each other, and try to make E laugh as much as possible.
And enjoy family nap time, if we have the chance.
I’ve been doing some math. Mathematically, this is my son’s life: Out of 168 hours in a week, he spends….
- 70 hours sleeping at night at home (on average 830 pm – 630 am) (yes, he also naps during the day, but that isn’t what I’m tracking here)
- 45 hours at daycare
- 5 hours w/mommy & daddy getting up/dressed on weekday mornings
- 5 hours in the car with daddy during their daily commute.
Last Week “everything else” Included:
- Two evenings home with mom while dad was at practice (6 awake hours)
- Two evenings home alone with dad while mom was at work (6 awake hours) (although as a special treat Dad did bring him by the fundraising event for about 45 minutes)
- One evening home alone with dad while mom was out w/her mom (3 awake hours)
- One afternoon at a Birthday party (with dad) (3 awake hours)
- One afternoon/evening at Grandma’s (with dad) while mom was at work (8.5 awake hours)
- One evening out at dinner with mom & dad’s friends (2 awake hours)
- One afternoon in and out of the car while mom & dad ran errands (3 awake hours)
Those remaining 11.5 hours were the time he was at home and awake with both of us there. That time basically represents Saturday and Sunday mornings, when we get up, eat breakfast, maybe watch a little Big Big World or perhaps E will convince me to show him the “Tivo Guy” animation over and over and over again. Then we’ll play with toys and read books. Or maybe we’ll go up to his room and make a game of some chore, like putting laundry away. Eventually we’ll get him dressed, and Josh and I will need to take our showers and get dressed. For this particular week, his S/S nap times took place during the errand running and time at Grandmas, but in other weeks that time needs to include E’s nap time as well. (When he’s at home with us for an entire weekend day, family nap time with books and snuggles can be a warm and wonderful treat.) 11.5 hours is 6.8% of E’s week. But in between the working and the groceries and the attempt to have a richer life involving other people (for both us and him), its all there is left.
Some Questions You Just Know Never To Ask
I actually started this exercise to assure myself that he does spend more time with us than he does with his daytime care provider, and he does, but just by a slim edge – 45 hours a week with her vs. a total of 53 hours per week when he is in the company of at least one parent. Of course, he spends stable chunks of time with Sarah and the little girls: 9 hours per day, 5 days per week, (on a side note, I also just realized as part of this exercise that we pay her less than half of minimum wage per hour for the time he is with her – and that includes two meals she provides each day! – but it’s the rate she’s asking and she gets to be at home with her own daughter, so I must not feel guilty about that), whereas his time with us is broken up into chunks and bits and dribs and drabs. This partitioning of our time with him is, above all things, is what I hate about the current schedule. He, of course, seems none the worse for wear, but who really knows how he regards the adults in his life? He knows that I am Mamma, and that Josh is Daddy. I don’t know what he calls Sarah and I don’t want to know. I suspect he calls her Mamma too, at least some of the time. It’s a question we just prefer not to ask.
"It's like having a Parent Die"
When I attempted to change his care situation last fall to such devastating effect, someone mentioned to me that abruptly taking him away from Sarah was “like having a parent die.” The comment offended me at the time, but with reflection I’ve come to realize that it’s the truth. Sarah, for better or worse, is another mother to him. H and M (the two girls he’s in care with – H is Sarah’s daughter) are his part-time siblings. I’ve always known that Sarah’s values will have as much impact on his upbringing as our own do, and the upside of having him in her home every day is that I’m sure that she’s warm and loving and moral and that it’s a non-harmful environment for him. This is the big pitfall of putting a child in care – you are, in fact, having him raised by a carefully chosen stranger. It’s a fortunate feature of the human psyche that love is a bottomless well (and more so in babies, I truly believe, who love completely and unconditionally, with their entire bodies and souls, reserving nothing), so I don’t have to worry about him loving Sarah “more”. If I had to guess, I would say that he knows he belongs with us because … well, because we smell like his parents should smell, but the mystery of what the realities of the world are to a toddler are broad and deep.
“We’ve been told we can have it all. The truth of the matter is that you can’t. You can’t have it all at the same time.” – Michelle Obama
My resolution for the spring is to find more time that we’re together as a family. I will admit that last week was sort of an aberration – this week we’re in now, for example, I have both weekend days off and Josh and I will be home together at least two and possibly three weeknight evenings. The question becomes what to do with the time we have. The temptation is to try and make that time “special” – to go places and do things on weekend days, to play special games or eat special meals on weeknights. The better answer is probably just to emphasize the idea that we are together, that we love each other, and try to make E laugh as much as possible.
And enjoy family nap time, if we have the chance.
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