Sticks and Stars

I abandoned my baby to the daycare center wolves this morning.

It was much, much easier than I expected.

When we arrived and met his teachers, Good Cop and Bad Cop. Good Cop was so fucking awesome and so clearly committed to spending all the time my son needed to help him get settled in. During the whole time I was there she never stopped trying to engage him, trying to play with him, trying to make him laugh, trying to show him cool stuff, despite the fact that he refused to talk to her at all and only scowled at her whenever she asked him a question. But I truly believe that it’s because of her that he allowed me to leave him so easily. I think that even though he wasn’t ready to accept her advances, he still felt reassured by her attention and interest.

Bad Cop, I didn’t care for so much. When we arrived she immediately started telling me all the rules. My son brought a school bus from home (he adores school buses, they are by far his favorite toy — only recently replacing back hoes) and I assured her that I knew he wasn’t supposed to bring toys from home but that I didn’t want to take it away from him during this stressful time. She was very clearly biting back her tongue in order to not insist on the rule (whereas Good Cop, when I once again explained the toy’s presence, suggested that he keep it with him all day for security). After Bad Cop finished going over the rules with us she explained to my son that it was time for me to leave, to which I responded that I thought I’d hang out with him for a while to help him settle in. She looked surprised that I’d dare to disrupt the morning routine but grudgingly admitted that it’d probably be fine if I stayed for five or ten minutes (I stayed almost an hour).

It’s okay. Good Cop provides the love, Bad Cop provides the structure, I can deal with that.

I thought leaving my son would be hard. I was choked up the whole time and more than ready to let the tears roll. I gently told him a few times that I needed to go, at which point he’d tell me no and then climb into my lap. But one time, the last time, he said no and then he thought about it for a second, pushed himself away from me and said, “Go mom, go. Bye.” And so I went. I was surprised, but not about to question his wisdom on the matter.

The two year olds, though, oh my god!! They were so cute!!! And they are just the same size as my little two year old and they talk just like he does and they have the same silly, silly sense of humor! I just wanted to hug and cuddle them all. And of course, in that lovely, open way of children, they were all immediately excited to play with the new boy and show him their cool stuff.

Eight of the twelve kids in his toddler class are girls. My two year old’s previous childcare was all boys, a two year old (my son), a three year old, and a four year old. And of course he has a five year old brother. I’m pretty sure he has never played with a girl of his own age in his entire life. I guess he’ll get plenty of experience now!

Nobody told me that I needed to bring him a blanket and sheet and full package of diapers and full change of clothes including shoes and raincoat and rainboots, so we’ll be scrambling tonight. But they take the kids outside in all weather and encourage them to play in the mud if that’s what they feel inclined to do, so he needs to have extras. That’s fine with me.

We’ll see how he is tonight, but the real test will be taking him in every day. The jury may still be out for now, but once he realizes he’s there for good, he might have a feeling or to to express on the matter.

Well, I made the decision. My two year old starts day care at a center tomorrow.

As of last week (and before) I had pretty much made the decision that I was going to wait. I had many doubts about the center we visited and my two year old didn’t seem thrilled with the idea of going there either. One thing that killed me was that they had a one year old who had just started attending the center and during the hour or so we were there, he did nothing but stand in the playground and cry. When I cast concerned looks in his tiny little direction, the staff informed me that he was new to the center and was learning not to be held all the time. A one year old! Newly away from his parents!! Crying for over an hour with no one to comfort him!!! It was shocking to me that the staff would hold that kind of philosophy, that a little one year old needed to tough it out or whatever, especially since the center had a pretty progressive philosophy over all, but I worried that it was because the staff themselves were all fairly young and I doubt any of them had children. Maybe it’s easy to be immune to a baby crying for an hour when you’ve never felt that connection to your own crying baby. Regardless, my two year old is not going to be thrilled when I abandon him to a completely unknown center for the first time and I cannot imagine him being left to just cry and cry. I cannot put him in a situation where I think there’s even a remote chance of that happening.

I also didn’t like that the toddler room had enforced circle time for at least twenty or so minutes at a time, and kids who weren’t willing to sit still for that time (two year olds!!) only had the option of quietly “reading” books by themselves (two year olds!!) and were definitely NOT allowed to play with all the very tempting toys on the shelves lining the room (two year olds!!). I know that some kind of circle time is common in most day care centers, but I want it to be something so fun that my two year old feels compelled to check it out and play along, not that he’s forced to sit there and “punished” if he can’t/won’t.

But then last week I got a call about an unexpected spot that opened up at a center less than a block away from my five year old’s school. I was feeling pretty content with my no-daycare-center decision so I resented the call and the resulting anxiety that welled up, but at the same time I felt like I should at least take a tour of the place because maybe it would be amazing and damn, wouldn’t I hate to miss out on that. Plus, it’s hard to find space in a daycare center in my city, especially one that’s NAEYC accredited (as this one happens to be) and if I turn down these spaces that come available to me, I’ll be bumped back to the bottom of waitlists and I’ve been on these lists for almost a year now.

And really, I was also curious to see whether I felt the same uneasiness about this center as I felt about the last place. I am more than willing to admit that some of my feelings might be entirely a projection of my issues with change and with disrupting my son and with handing him over to strangers, and not issues with the actual center.

So he and I went for a tour. And I liked it. There was a girl new to the center (a two year old) who was clearly having a hard time (bawling her eyes out) but she was sitting in the teacher’s lap (on the floor) and all the other kids were engaged in activities with and around her. The kids seemed happy to be there. They raced over to the director who was giving us the tour and started talking to her as soon as she walked in. They were all engaged in various activities and when I asked about circle time the director said that kids could participate or not, that circle time was just one of many available activities happening in the room at any particular time.

Unlike at the previous center, my son didn’t cling to me the whole time. He didn’t exactly race off with the other children (that’s his brother’s role, not his), but he was interested in checking things out and he wanted to go back and check out more things when it was time to leave.

The center was really quite small and the rooms were small but bright. They take 12 kids in each of the two “big kid” classes (toddlers and preschoolers) and that amount of kids in the amount of space available felt good. Plus they had a big playground for the big kids and a big (separate) playground for the little ones (presumably the one year olds. I’m guessing the infants do not do much playground playing). The toys lining the walls were all wood with lots of items to facilitate creative play. There were lots of readily available art supplies and even a separate art studio that was filled with many more art supplies.

I can’t say that I’m thrilled with my decision. I’m not at all sure that it’s the right decision. Should I hold out for another year before moving him to a more structured environment? I don’t know. But I do feel like it’s a bad idea to pass up a spot at what is likely the best, most conveniently located center in my area. And I will be happy when I stop having to arrange my schedule around his current provider’s children’s schedules. She’s already requested almost 15 days off this year and it kills me to spend so much of my time off accommodating her schedule instead of on days off that I actually want to take.

Regardless, I’m going to give this a month and see how it goes. My hope is that I can tough out the initial transition enough to give this a fair evaluation, and my bigger hope is that he actually likes it, and my biggest hope is that he likes it a lot.

The instructor for the class I’m taking recently posted to our class email list a lengthy discussion about further education (whether or not to pursue a techie-related degree) and about getting a job (which, if these people are thinking they can get a techie job after one tiny little HTML class, they may be in for painful disappointment — especially since I’ve seen their final projects and they are pretty much all the hideous geocities websites you’d see back in 1998). One point that our instructor made, though, was that it will probably be far more rewarding to find a techie job in a non-techie organization doing work that means something to you rather than being one of the nameless, faceless coding masses at a large techie organization (of which there are many in my city).

I thought that was an interesting point and one that certainly makes sense. I often find myself thinking of my current job as sort of my jumping off job, from which I will move on to one of those large techie organizations, at which point I will have “made it” as a professional techie of some sort. Beyond the geek cred that it would give me, I never really looked forward to that step but I figured it was what I had to do if I wanted to be a “real” web developer/programmer/database administrator/whatever.

The thought of working for an organization like that is not at all compelling. I imagine competing with men with ego problems (and sexist ego problems in particular) and I don’t really want to be condescended to by 22 year old boys with CS degrees who need to prove their manly superiority. I don’t want to be bogged down by so many layers of bureaucracy that any innovation I am a part of is long diluted before ever seeing the light of day. I definitely don’t want to be expected to work extra hours every day to meet goals that I don’t particularly care about.

The thought of doing work that I like while doing the work I want to do is so much nicer! I mean, that’s what I’m doing now and I know how rewarding it is. I work for an organization with a reasonably admirable mission and I work in an IT department that’s doing something very cool, namely using all Open Source software to meet the vast computing needs of our agency and building our own very awesome Open Source web-based client service tracking software (released to the public today!). It is so fun to work on developing this software and it is so fun to be part of the Open Source community and it is so exciting to be creating this totally awesome setup that can serve as an alternative model for lots of nonprofits who are so often in the dark when it comes to technology. When it comes to nonprofit technology and information management, we are doing pretty cutting edge work and that’s very, very exciting.

And even better, I have actual say in what we are doing, a significant say. Admittedly, I am the person who is supposed to coordinate and manage and oversee development of this software application so it makes sense that I have say, but there are four of us on the software side of our department and when the team is small like that, everyone has say. I like being part of a team that is small enough that my voice gets heard and listened to and respected.

The longer I spend in the job and the more I avail myself of knowledge and resources in the larger community and the more I learn about this field, the more fascinated I become. I can think of many, many projects I’d like to work on and I really like the thought of leaving this job (way down the road) to get a job doing something I find even more exciting. I don’t really want to be a low level coder at Google, I want to be a part of exciting, innovative projects. Hell, I might want to start my own exciting, innovative projects!

It’s been so exciting to get to finally be a part of this work that, until a year ago, I had only yearned for from afar. I’ve been so busy focusing on what I’m learning and what I need to learn just for my current job (and so happy just being in this job) that I haven’t thought much about the future (except my potential shadowy future as a small coder in a large pond). I’m also so used to thinking about the future in terms of what ever-more-impressive job can I get (since that would have been the most satisfying part of any job in my old career path) that it’s weird to think about what cool project I’d like to be a part of instead. Kinda opens up a world of possibilities.