Daycare Drop & Dash

We arrive at daycare pretty early in the morning, so there is a “sparse” group of kids in the drop off room usually when we arrive. Sometimes we are the first ones, sometimes we are the 2nd or 3rd ones to arrive. One of the girls, I’ll call her Teeny, is a very sweet but incredibly quiet little girl. She is several months younger than Maddie, so we only see her in the “morning drop off room.”
This morning, we were the first to arrive at school, and while I was filling out the daily sheet for Maddie, Teeny’s Dad walked in with a sleeping Teeny, basically laid her on the couch, and walked out as she woke up. She started crying and I looked up and heard the teacher say “I really don’t like it when Parents do that…” I looked around and I said, “wow, did he really just leave as fast as that?” and She said, yes, in fact he did. It was a “drop and dash” faster than I’d ever seen before with any kid at daycare.

We often don’t see Teeny arrive because she normally gets there before us or after us, but apparently this is standard practice for her family. I asked the teacher, “are there many parents that do that?” She told me YES, there were quite a few and she said it’s pretty much never good for the kids. She said one little boy in her room has that sort of dropoff, and while the kids (and he specifically) always recover after a short time, he gets really anxious anytime this teacher leaves the room during the day because he thinks she will just suddenly POOF, be gone too.

“Abandoment ain’t Just for Adoptees” it turns out.

The irony is, while Teeny is not an adoptee, she was a premature baby, who spent some time in NICU- which means she lost out on some of those first days of constant nurturing in the same way that our adopted kids did. BUT- even those kids who were not adopted and who did not spend time in NICU as a tiny infant- if they experience this day in and day out, don’t they too get the impression that “anyone can disappear at anytime” for an unknown length of time? That’s enough to make anyone anxious. How do you feel if one day your boss is not there and all you hear is “they’ll be back later” but don’t know where they are, why they aren’t there, or if later means “lunchtime” or “next week”? It would even make adults feel a bit anxious. So how about kids who have a very different grasp of time and permanence?

Why do parents do this? Why not make 5-10 minutes more in your day for a calm and relaxing drop off? I spend anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. Some days, drop off is quite a bit longer than I want, but most days it’s 5-10 minutes. On most days, I stash her diapers in the basket, fill out the paper, give her a hug and a kiss and a smile and get my hug/kiss/smile (our daily daycare ritual), and off I go. SOME days there is required book reading, SOME days Maddie needs an extra hug and a kiss, SOME days the teacher distracts her with a book. But for the most part, drop off is quick and easy and HAPPY and painless because we put 5-10 minutes into it, every day and more as needed. I have a confident happy girl who does not cry when I leave her. There have probably been fewer than 5 days in the past year and a half that I left her at daycare that she was actively crying when I left. If I did the drop & dash, it would be a daily occurrence. Sure she would recover probably within a few minutes, but what’s the point? Why reinforce that people can disappear at a moments notice when all it takes is a few minutes more for an EASY separation to occur? I see LOTS of kids whose parents do take that extra 5-10 minutes (Or total 5-10 minutes) looking happy and relaxed when their parents leave. So is it worth it? Those extra 5 minutes at work in exchange for your child’s anxiety level rising on a daily basis as you dash out? I doubt it.

I looked at a case study of ONE child. It’s hardly indicative of “the average child’s response” to this sort of daily drop off routine, but I do wonder if Teeny would be a more confident child if she felt reassured at drop off rather than sudden abandonment.

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LID!

December 23, 2010!

Here are our stats:

DTC: 12-13-10
LID: 12-23-10

Now bring on the next shared list!