Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Justin answers a question about how to handle the emotionally volatile school drop off process.
Aaron:
We are parents to a 2.5-year-old who just started daycare this week. He is an only child, and has been cared for at home until now by us and his grandparents. The first two days he seemed excited for school, cried when I left, but after school seemed positive about it when I asked. Day 3 drop-off was brutal as he was upset before we even left the house. Every parent blog and parent I talk to advises not dragging out the drop-off routine, but I still don't feel fully prepared for the tears and feelings of guilt. We like the main teacher a lot, but usually only the aide is present at drop-off, and she doesn't seem as confident guiding me and the kiddo through the handoff. Finally, he is the oldest in his class (his room is supposed to be through age 3, but the relatively older kids have advanced out already) and is the only one potty trained and at the age where kids start fighting naps.
Any guidance on how to steel myself (and him) for this process, or on navigating uncertainties I am having with the aide and class placement?
It's the time of year when most parents have to fully embrace villainhood in the name of public health: flu and covid shot season. If you have a young child and you are a parent of some reasoning who does not get medical advice from ChatGPT or the beet-hued and beef-tallow–fed husk of the secretary for Health and Human Services, you know that the trip to the doctor for yearly vaccines can be like a prison march. The choices you have are to simply lie to your child about what is happening right up until the moment a needle presents itself, try to reason with them about the benefits of not getting sick (or getting everyone else in the family, at school, or in the neighborhood sick). There is also bribery. No matter the choice, you know with absolute certainty it will all dissolve into the most devastating sobs and accusatory stares, and you will be haunted by your child's primal screams and their burgeoning taste for vengeance.
I made the choice to tell our oldest daughter her appointment was coming up this month. She's almost four years old, breathtakingly clever, and has an advanced capacity for doing bits—she's started saying "fascinating, Captain," because she has overheard too many of my Star Trek references. All of which is to say, misdirection is often a bad choice. So I told her about the shots, and since I got my own jabs a day earlier, made a show of my own Band-Aids. We promised her a trip to our favorite coffee shop for pastries after the doctor. And when the time came, we even let her have special screen-time to watch Dora The Explorer (original recipe) at the doctor.
And we still had a nuclear-core meltdown. Streams of tears, bubbles of snot, wailing that could be heard across the lower third of the island of Manhattan. Still, in time, and with the help of a croissant, some steamed milk, and Bluey stickers, she recovered. We even got to talk about how it's OK to not be brave sometimes, that getting a shot can make you sad or scared and that's a regular part of life. It was close to success. And then I brought her to school and the doomsday clock reset, and once again she cycled through unrestrained fury and limp, gasping sobs. The only way out was for me to pick her up, place her inside the classroom, close a safety gate and walk away as I heard her screaming my name.
There is a reason most parents and teachers give the same advice when it comes to school drop off. When the time comes, leaving your kid at school more closely resembles skydiving than any socio-emotional level of parenting. You're either in the plane, or plummeting to the earth and dealing with everything that entails. Under no circumstances should you pause too long to think about it. Going to school or daycare is one of the earliest places our children have to grasp their own agency and how exactly to navigate the world. Fortunately, in the case of school you're not abandoning them to the wind, but to a room bursting with toys and books, potential friends and highly trained educators who start the process of teaching your children about who they can become independent of their parents.
Of course none of that helps you when you feel like you have catalogued Disturbing Childhood Memory No. 1,143 for your kid: abandonment at school. Leaving your child under someone else's care is undeniably one of the more unforgiving thresholds you cross as a parent because of all the dynamics at play. When you place your kid in daycare, then school, it's because you want them to have a good education but, also, as a parent you absolutely need time to work or just have a moment for yourself. You love them, you want them safe, but you also need them to be, well, gone. Those are messy considerations to balance while your small child, often with all the emotional regulation of a grizzly cub, is unraveling before you.
I'll never forget how, when we first put our oldest daughter in daycare, I was struck by the realization that the math on how many hours I spend with her just changed dramatically, and totally. Daycare leads to school, then bigger school, then activities and sports, and at some point they become tiny people who fly in and out of your house. When we let go those early times at daycare drop-off, some part of us knows this is an ending. Now, both of you are standing there quaking, unsure and on the verge of tears.
When people give the advice to cut and run as fast as possible from drop-off, what goes unsaid is all the preparation in the hours and minutes leading up to that door. If you are indeed a parent who does not tip off their kid that Dad's not going into school and hanging for graham crackers and Raffi's greatest hits for five hours, then you may, in fact, be a monster, and your child would be within their rights to pummel you with whatever is in reach of their tiny hands.
The best guidance I can offer here is that basic one: Try to talk up school with your kid as much as possible. Talk to them about what they like at school, who their new buddies might be, and, yes, the parts that make them scared. Walk them through the flow of the day, not just for them, but everyone in the house so they know what the grownups are doing and where they should be. Yes, routine is an uninspiring word for a kid, but giving them a sense of their time and relative dimension in space can be very powerful. They can begin to pick out the parts of the day they like, prepare themselves for the parts they don't, and get to know the joy of having something to look forward to at the end of the day. This is useful for them, but seeing that slow bloom of confidence and independence will shore you up as well.
This is where I make a confession: I am a prep parent. I do not go in much on military dogma or inspirational quotes, but when it comes to parenting I would gladly get "proper preparation prevents poor performance" as a cross stitch for our home. With two small kids I have to try to keep myself a few steps ahead of them at all times, otherwise I will spend the day dog-paddling through meals, activities, and scheduling. This is useful not just in meal planning, but knowing the spots where meltdowns will be most common and giving me time to run some game theory on my own family.
Sitting down to talk to my older daughter about getting her shots before the appointment was just part of our regular routine now. That morning was the perfect example of how things can go relatively right and tremendously wrong all in the same span of time. While I had spent time talking through the doctor's appointment, I took my eye off the tricky negotiation of drop-off after school is in session. Brutal lessons were learned all around, and only some of them could be solved by stickers.
And yet, I know this is a process that will continue to open up the world for my daughter, especially as it comes at my own expense. This fall she started her very first dance class, something she was eager and excited for right up to the moment she had to go into the studio by herself with the other kids. Meltdowns, recriminations, and after the first few weeks the only acceptable answer was for one of us to sit in the shame corner of the studio as other parents watched from the observation deck.
What I settled on was a kind of game, part preparation and part gamble. When she would ask about the schedule on the days for dance class I started telling her it was actually Baba's dance class, where he puts on his leotard and goes in the studio to stretch and learn dances with the other parents while the kids sit back and watch. This, finally, elicited a harsh "NOOOOO," from her, either out of innate need to correct me or spurred by the challenge that I could become a better dancer than her. When we got to class and I saw her freeze as the instructor welcomed in students, I repeated the bit: Was it time for me to go dance instead? She laughed, "Nooooo, Baba," before we hugged, and she ran off through the door. I was never more proud of her, not to mention relieved I would not have to suit up in a child's leotard.
