The Secret of Daycare

There is something daycare providers have not told you. My own kids are far more challenging than all of my daycare kids put together. My daycare kids put their best show on for me. They are excited to come and when they get tired they go home with their mommies. I don't have to wrestle with them to go to bed at night. They don't argue with me about every little thing just to make me angry. They don't know what buttons to push to really make me want to hide in the closet and cry. You are more emotionally invested in your own children. That is not a bad thing to say. They are yours. You made them. Your heart and soul is in them and when they hurt, you hurt. But that also makes them draining. It can make you want to trade kids for the night, as much as you love them, just to get a few minutes to go to the bathroom by yourself. When Richard was born I figured the transition to two kids would be easy, and for the most part it was. It was much easier than going to one child at least. I thought I could just cut back on one daycare kid and it would be the same old routine. I didn't count on a child who is every bit as stubborn and oppinionated as I am. He isn't even one and we are already having power struggles. This child has opinions on everything from what he has for breakfast to what he wears for the day. What one year old has shirts that he simply refused to wear? I'm scared for him to get older.

There is also more guilt associated with your own children. Ryan has days where he needs more attention than others. He is my sensitive one. He feels things deeply, and I love that about him, but he needs a lot of attention to be his happiest. He loves having his friends come to our house. He wouldn't give it up for the world. There are days, however, that he feels secondary and he really needs to be first. He gets jealous easily. It tears me in two because I have a responsibility to these children who come into my home to provide the best care that I can, and I really try to, but that takes some of the attention away from my own kids. That's where the guilt comes in. I give them my time by doing daycare instead of working outside of the home, but it also takes me time from them. Life is full of compromises.