Category: Daycare Lady

Parents forget that although my day to day job is raising other peoples children, I too was a mother of three children. The juggling act as a working family is only relaxed because I don’t leave my house. The challenge, or should I say struggle of getting my own children ready and dressed for the day is equally challenging, so when children come to daycare in their pyjamas, wearing mismatched socks, etc…. I understand and don’t judge.

One winter day a mother comes into daycare completely flustered, pushes her daughter Suzy into the entrance, looks at me with desperate eyes as I come to greet them, and says, “Can you take her winter gear off, I am late”, she pauses and says “Please don’t judge me”, as she rushes out the door.

Suzy is smiling ear to ear, wearing her snow pants, jacket, boots, toque, mittens, full winter gear. I don’t think anything of it, bewildered by why this Mother was so concerned about me judging her. So I take her jacket off, and turn to hang it up in the closet as Suzy continues to take off her winter gear. I turn around to grab her snow pants and there stands Suzy wearing nothing but a one piece swimsuit.

It is not my position to judge but to understand, be compassionate, and remember to err is human. Human nature dictates that to learn we must make mistakes, which takes us to the commando story from the early years.

Many families of all sorts have graced my door. Single parents, divorced, married, no matter what their status is everyone has a tough time keeping up wtih household chores. One day a parent comes to drop off her child and says,

“I didn’t get a chance to do laundry, so Zed doesn’t have on any underwear” as she leaves the daycare and heads to work.

I pay no attention to this detail, Zed is clothed/covered, toilet trained, so being commando is nothing too concerning.

The day goes normally, and outdoor time is Zed’s favorite, especially the sandbox. A few children, Zed included, are busy quietly playing and building sandcastles and such, so I take the opportunity to finally sit, listening to the quiet murmurs and giggles, so good for the soul. Suddenly they are all cracking up laughing, getting louder an louder. At this point I decide to walk over to check on their sandcastles they were building in their little huddle. Low and behold Zed is more than a little bit exposed from a hole in the crotch of his pants. Even worse, he gets up and runs away from me, with everything dangling. I tried relentlessly to stop myself from laughing. Frantically I started running after him asking him to please put his “stuff” back into his pants, not realizing that my voice was raised. What the neighbors must have thought about my daycare that day!

The mistake I learned very quickly that day was to always have extra clothes on hand for each child 🙂