Week of the Young Child

OK, I confess from the outset that I am Scrooge. I hate the Week of the Young Child. Or I suppose I should be more precise: I hate the way Will’s daycare celebrates the Week of the Young Child. It’s a lovely idea in principle—a week dedicated to a more overt recognition that children need to learn and grow in a supportive environment.

Even though I hate the Week of the Young Child, I love Will’s school, which is wonderful. Properly speaking it’s a “child development center” not a daycare, and certainly not a nursery, which is what many people from these parts call it. The staff are well trained and loving, always good about communicating with parents, and the classrooms themselves are cozy and bright, lots of fun age-appropriate toys which they rotate regularly so that the kids have variety. I always always feel welcome in the center—and some places don’t do that. While touring some other schools, I’ve asked about visitation during the day (which I almost never do, but reserve the right) and been told they prefer parents not drop in because it disrupt the classroom schedules or activities. Show up unannounced at Will’s school and you get to sit right down and read a book with the kids or share snack or whatever. No problem. So I’m very happy with the center.

But the Week of the Young Child is something else. Monday is usually some kind of center-wide fun activity—blowing food colored bubbles or something. A scavenger hunt (imagine dozens and dozens of cut-out shapes of bunnies and frogs scattered like confetti all over the playground outside—anyhow who finds one turns it in for a prize—pretty hard not to find one). Every year we have a book fair too—it changes the whole atmosphere of the center, because you walk into the front office and there are books and toys everywhere—you can barely turn around. And food sign-up sheets for the Friday picnic, and volunteer sign-up sheets for staffing the book fair—and a big bulletin board listing all the week’s events. So far, lovely.

Then Tuesday rolls around. Tuesday is always “Lunch with Mom and Dad” day. The sign-up sheets pop on up the classroom doors for this—“Which parents will be here for lunch?”—and then two blanks next to your child’s name for you to write in your name. Well, it just so happens that the Week of the Young Child is conveniently located during exams, and I haven’t been able to attend a single lunch with my child during one of these events (and I’m counting the years Laura was at this center too). Chris can’t easily get out of class either, and his prep period never seems to be at the right time.

It wouldn’t be a big deal, except that most of the parents do come, and then something happened last year that really pissed me off. We got a note home saying something to the effect of not to worry if you couldn’t come, your child would be “adopted” that year by someone who would take him to lunch. I just about hit the roof. Maybe I’m a gozilla-like parent, but my basic philosophy is that if I could go to lunch with my son, I certainly would, and I wouldn’t be paying five hundred dollars a month for him to attend a child development center in the first place. And I certainly am not interested in him being adopted in my absence. Fortunately the rhetoric of that letter was toned down this year, but I have always felt like a bad mother on this day, and last year I was so angry that I am still holding a bit of a grudge about it now, a year later.

I have been very good, though—never complaining about this, always buying a raffle ticket to support PTO and signing up for juice or something for the picnic. But this year it just so happened that as I was signing Will in one morning, the staff director asked me how many of Will’s grandparents would be attending the Grandparent Ice Cream Social the next day (also a traditional part of the Week of the Young Child). Well, let’s see. Six total grandparents, and all of them at least two hours away. Most working. And none really keen on driving two hours to eat ice cream for thirty minutes with Will’s class—particularly given the fact it’s a Wednesday and they would have to turn right back around and drive home without even having time to visit with us (most of them now complain about driving in the dark—my own mother is generally gone by 2:00 anytime she visits us). So none. The answer is none of Will’s parents or grandparents will be attending.

I must’ve made a face or something (my body language is always betraying me), because Pam asked what the matter was. I gave her a very watered down version of why I hate the Week of the Young Child—focusing particularly on the part that hurts my feelings the most—that I can never eat lunch with Will that day—and this is the kicker. She says to me, oh, he won’t even notice if you’re not there. Now this was probably true when he was a baby in the roly poly room. This might have been true when he was a toddler in the lady bug room. But now my boy is a big three-year old glow worm, and I guarantee you that if all the other parents are there, he’s wondering where his are. I said, Pam, I just don’t believe you, and walked away before I could get ugly, but I’m afraid that this didn’t have any positive effect on dissipating either my dislike of the Week of the Young Child (or my grudge from last year).

I should learn to enter a zen state, not let these things upset me, because I know that I am not the best mother in the world, but I am generally a pretty good mother, and certainly not an outright bad mom. But boy am I a grumpy one that week.