The Journey Through Daycare

Long-time readers of Jeremy's blog know that we have had some, er, challenges achieving stable daycare.

After Barb & I exhausted our dual part-time regimen last summer, we brought in a live-in au pair named Bella from Sweden. Alas, she became homesick and ran back to mommy within weeks.

Then, our beloved Teacher Robert took Jeremy on short notice into his wonderful home daycare about three miles from our house. Alas, five months later Robert and his partner adopted two toddlers and could no longer keep Jeremy.

Next, we found Miss Wendi, who taught Jeremy some signs, sent him home with art projects each week, planted gardens in plastic cups with the children, and stressed manners and civility among each of the six one- and two-year olds who were enrolled. Alas, Jeremy was sick for seven to ten days, every three weeks, and ended up in the hospital after four months of that nonsense, so we pulled Jeremy from there to create some distance between him and another unusually mucousy boy.

One month ago, we signed Jeremy up for Jen's Kid Farm. His mommies were hesitant. We were leery of any daycare, simply because of the increased potential for exposure to viruses and other bugs. And Jen's Kid Farm is a "large" home daycare, meaning they can have up to twelve kids. We were really beholden to the idea of small daycare.

But there were many things we really liked about the Farm. Jen and her cousin-and-best-friend-since-first-grade Selena run the daycare together. Many large daycare operations have a single person -- almost always a woman -- who owns the business, who pays an assistant -- almost always a surly teenager looking to make some dough -- to do the dirty work of feeding and diapering and refereeing. But Jen and Selena are a true team and equally devoted to the kids on the farm. They offer home-cooked, vegetarian food, including pans of spinach lasagne, blueberries and cheddar cheese sandwiches. (Yes, they do it on the government subsidy, proving that all daycares can afford to offer more healthful fare than Cheerios, hot dogs and chicken nuggets.) They open their entire home to the children, making it feel more like a home setting. And they mostly follow each individual child's schedule. If Jeremy needs a nap at nine in the morning (like the morning after a late night of Fourth of July fireworks), he gets it. If he is hungry, they feed him. If he wants to play outside, they take him out in a Little Swimmer and let him play with the hose and the dog.

And I haven't even described these two women. They are unique, energetic and instantly likeable. They are thirty-something Gen-Xers, one with pink hair and the other with orange, and they like to play roller derby and accumulate tattoos and piercings, and they are so normal, honest and loving. They each have two sons of their own. Best of all (wink wink), they absolutely adore Jeremy. How they can seem as perky at the end of a hot summer day as when we drop Jeremy off, I have no clue. We are simply grateful.

The main lessons we have learned so far along this childcare journey are two-fold: one, Jeremy is incredibly sociable and adapts well to change; and two, toddlers are supposed to play. Jeremy shows us the first lesson in many different contexts, and not just along the daycare road. The latter is sometimes hard to remember, in this twenty-first century America where children's lives tend to be over-structured for success. There is incredible marketing and social pressure to teach, teach, teach. Undeniably, toddlerhood is about learning. But in our sanitized culture we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that much, if not most, learning during the tender years happens best through physical play, fantasizing, and spontaneous manipulation of the real world around us. And probably not in miniaturized classroom settings complete with lesson plans.

Jen's Kid Farm is all about play. The difference between, say, Miss Wendi's and Jen's is that Jen and Selena look for the teaching moments as they arise from the natural actions and interactions of the kids, rather than from a preset curriculum. In truth, the structured setting probably benefits the parents more than the kids; it certainly helped us to easily justify the long hours that Jeremy spends in daycare. But, come on, you expect me to believe that Jeremy planted a garden when he was fourteen months old? Sure, I bet he helped aerate the soil, but all the rest?

What we know right now is that Jeremy is playing hard, eats a wider variety of good healthy foods, naps well, and is calmly happy (not desperate) to see us at the end of the day. And he hasn't gotten sick!!! So he goes to the Farm three days a week. And the journey continues.