An open letter to my child's daycare teachers

After a year of rushed pick ups and drop offs, this is what I haven't had time to say. Photo / 123rf

COMMENT

Today is the last day of term at my daughter's daycare. There have been many rushed pick ups and hurried drop offs this year. These were the words I haven't had time to say.

Thank you.

Thank you for nurturing her. As a working mum, it's easy to feel guilty about the hours spent away from her. Seeing my daughter come home with a smile on her face and full of stories of her adventures at "school", I feel the guilt wash away from me. She's not just away so I can work. She's having her own enriching experiences.

Thank you for teaching my child all the new songs she's been singing this year. It gives her such joy to belt them out, wherever we are (the most inopportune the time, the better, apparently). I didn't grow up with English nursery rhymes and wouldn't know how to teach many of them to her so I'm extra grateful for those.

Thank you for feeding her. Thank you for knowing what food she loves and what food she'll twist her nose at. Thank you for teaching her good table manners and making my life easier when dinnertime rolls around.

Thank you for paying attention to her quirks and the things that make her different. You know what phases she's at in her life as much as I do. You know what her funny, unique expressions mean. You seem as excited about her progress as I am.

Thank you for all the drawings. I don't have the slightest inclination towards arts and crafts and my daughter has barely seen me hold a crayon or a pair of scissors. Thank you for injecting creativity into her days in a way that I frankly cannot be bothered doing. I always thought I'd be the minimalist type mum who doesn't grow attached to her child's "artwork" but I've now got a box full of daycare masterpieces that remind me of how much she can do without me.

Thank you for allowing her to express herself. I often pick her up from daycare and find her wearing multiple items from the dress up area. Princess dresses, butterfly wings, giant bow headbands, you name it, she's wearing it, often simultaneously. You allow her the space to imagine a world where she can be anything (and apparently she often chooses to be everything at once).

Thank you for the love and the relentless, daily commitment to my child's development. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot but I really believe it takes a huge amount of love to do what you do. In most jobs, we can decide to have the odd day when we don't really do much, just click a few links, fill out some cells in the spreadsheet, wait for 5pm and go home. Not in your job. You've got to be hyper-attentive, highly tuned to every child's needs. I know my daughter feels the love. I see it in the way she looks for you in a crowd of children when we walk into daycare and how she goes to your arms from mine, because she knows she'll be safe there and "mummy will be back soon" (well, kind of "soon" anyway).

Thank you for giving me space to be me. A lot of families in New Zealand are like mine: we moved here as adults and don't have extended family around. I don't get to drop my daughter off at the grandparents' or her aunt's for a while. Whenever she's not at daycare, she's with us. When she's not with us, she's with you. Any time we have without her is because she is with you. Any time I have for myself, without someone screaming "SNACK! SNACK! CAN I HAVE A SNACK?" into my ears 357 times an hour, I owe it to you. Sorry if she's screaming that at you right now while you've got her and I'm writing this.

Thank you for allowing her a level of freedom of play and independence my worried mama heart doesn't always allow me to give her. I walk into daycare some days to find her swinging on the monkey bars and my heart skips a bit. "What if she falls?" I wonder, before stopping to marvel at how much more confident she's becoming. And if she does fall, I know you'll be there to help her back up.

Leaving our babies with other people is hard. You grow them inside you for so long, you nurture them in your arms for another long while, day and night, those wonderful creatures all to yourself and then it's time to go back to work and you have to get used to being without them for hours at a time and trust that someone else will look after them just as well as you do.

As tough as it is to think of our little people cutting the umbilical cord and filling their lives with experiences that are autonomous and separate from ours, I take comfort in the fact that she's guided by adults who care for her when I am not there to do it myself.

It takes a village - and you're a loving, steadfast and hugely important part of mine.