Now that the little match stick is over one year old, other parents and our family are starting to ask, “Did you put him in daycare?”
Everyone and his distant influencer cousin have opinions when raising children. They range from “turn your child into a resilient genius” to “you leave your precious baby in a shark tank.”
Of course, most parents don’t even have a choice. If both parents need work, your child must go to daycare. The decision to “go to nursery or not to daycare” is a privilege and we are happy to choose.
Despite the benefits of waxing many family members for daycare, I still haven’t convinced. Maybe it was because my father left me an abused daycare teacher who was very scared of me and I started trembling and crying as soon as I saw her. He continued to send me there because he thought it would increase resilience. Since this happened before 5, I don’t remember it, and don’t know that it was the one who made me a lifetime or made me stronger.
Therefore, I cannot rely on my experience and I have to rely on research. Interestingly, when studying the benefits of daycare, I found the opposite. Specially for children under 3 years of age.
Articles similar to the psychology of media today show that day care, while very suitable for women’s empowerment, is not that good for children’s health.
Basically, the point is that children under 3 years of age do not develop enough to play in parallel with other children and therefore cannot benefit from social interaction. They tend to play with other children who are supported by other adults. At this stage, it is most important to form a safe attachment with one or two stable, consistent adults. Since daycare cannot provide this optimal one-to-one ratio, instead having a lot of kids in a large room, this can put pressure on the kids and can lead to aggressive behavior in the future.
The Canadian study found that attending daycare was 3 times faster than that of children who did not attend daycare. Another study found that day care children had higher cortisol levels than children who stayed at home. The longer the time, the worse the result. Those who participate in shorter but shorter days (like 5 and a half-day day is better than all day). Similarly, the lower the child to caregiver ratio, the better. The faster the children are, the more frequently the children can return to their parents to “recharge”, the better.
The purpose of these articles is not to politicize daycare or make parents feel sad about putting their children there (especially because many have no choice), but to question the ancient belief that “daycare is good for the development and socialization of skills.”
In addition, there are warnings. If the living parents are under great stress or the family environment is broken, day care will be better even with a higher proportion of children to caregivers. If your caregiver grandparents rely on screen time or believe in outdated child safety standards, day care may be better.
That said, I wouldn’t take this scientific study as a gospel because just like breastfeeding, following only what’s best for your child while ignoring your own health is not the answer. Happy parents will become happy children. There is a need to balance because your mental health will affect them.
So I decided to list a list of advantages/disadvantages:
advantage
- The biggest professional I hear is that daycare makes your kids social and teaches them valuable skills such as sharing and voice development. But this is based on anecdotal evidence and feelings from other parents rather than science.
- In Canada, there are subsidized daycare attractions of $10 a day, and if you put yourself on the box office waiting list, you may get a chance within 2-3 years. This will make it financially powerless, as even tax-free Canadian child benefits can cover it, so it’s like getting free daycare (assuming your income is low enough after retirement that you don’t withdraw the CCB))
- Putting LMS into daycare would do wonders for my relationship. When Wanderer and I were on a team, after multiple sleep-deprived nights, there was a yell. Having 7-8 hours of the day back will help us focus on our relationships and focus more on passion projects (such as this blog!). Now, we take turns watching him every other day, while another writes, but letting the whole day go back to do whatever we want will be heaven.
- I used to be able to hike Macchu Picchu with a thin air high attitude for 4 hours. Now, I can’t even push my son’s stroller to the perfect ground in the grocery store without getting entangled. Nowadays, the only thing to solve is my chin, when I just throw a lot of junk food down as a reward. Full-time daycare will give me time to exercise.
shortcoming
- Research shows that full-time daycare can have a negative impact on children under the age of 3.
- Take the subsidized place from another child. I feel intimate about this because other parents need these locations more than I do. I could put him without subsidies and pay for more. Financially speaking, it doesn’t make sense unless my passion project’s revenue covers it, in which case I’m paying for more.
- travel. This is a very “our” consideration and may not apply to other parents. If he was in full-time daycare, we wouldn’t allow us to take him out for months at a time, so we can only travel for a few weeks a year. This doesn’t scratch our feet itchy (ok, it sounds rough when I type it).
- One of the biggest complaints about other parents having children in daycare is that they keep getting sick! Day care is a huge petri dish so our sons may take home a variety of illnesses. no thanks.
- I talk to LSM 90% of the time and as a result, most of his words are in Mandarin. This is how he likes to communicate at the moment. I know it will change later, but I hope he can get as much exposure as possible and spending most of the day in daycare won’t give him that.
As an experiment, I recently tried flexible daycare, putting LMS into a few days of the month. He didn’t “thrive” in that environment like the children others said, but he didn’t suffer. This is because LMS has an easy-going personality, does not cry for a long time, and can take a nap anywhere. The teacher said he did a good job, took very few naps, and got along with other children.
But when I came to pick him up at the end of the day, he still cried and ran towards me so quickly that he almost knocked down another child. When I picked him up, he grabbed me tightly and gave me the biggest kiss. Therefore, there seems to be some separation anxiety. But he was also happy to see his teacher the next week and I didn’t cry when I left, so maybe it was just a phase of adjustment too? Remember, this daycare has excellent reviews, recommended by many parents, and has a good adult-to-child ratio to toddlers, so I don’t worry about the quality of their care.
Sadly, this flexible part-time daycare has been closed recently because it can’t sustain itself financially, so the only option we have now is full-time daycare. In fact, due to government subsidies, almost all dining trucks that once had a part-time option are now full-time. If you know of any part-time daycare in Toronto or Vancouver, let me know in the comments below.
Currently, we are debating between using family and part-time nanny to give us rest occasionally or putting LMS into full-time daycare.
What do you think? Should we put LMS in full-time daycare?
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