New Adventures

Today was the day I had been dreading for weeks.

The day my daughter started at a new daycare.

See, this over-achieving mother, had the brilliant idea that life wasn’t already complicated enough with going back to school, working full-time, raising 1 child and growing another and that a promotion would be a good idea. With that promotion comes lots of change and that change includes moving my daughter from the daycare facility that has helped raise her since she was 10 weeks old to a new daycare center closer to home to “make things easier.”

Don’t get me wrong, the new daycare center is nice, comparable in price, offers even more structured education for my daughter, is closer to home and some of the kids in her class will more than likely be friends she will see when she starts at a real school. Sounds all good on paper and in my head, but my heart was breaking. Thinking of my little girl leaving her first set of little friends behind to a new world of strange teachers, strange routines, strange toys and other strange friends. The teachers at the Seay Childcare Center on the campus of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Plano are AMAZING women! They have helped raise my little girl to be a sweet, well rounded, educated little person. They love her just as much as I do.

Who knows if the teachers at this new center would do the same for our family? I’d like to think that in my many pre-visits and phone calls with questions that I am a good judge of character and was able to get a good sense of who these people are and how they were going to be for my daughter. They don’t advertise the fluff! They don’t tell you during the tour that “we will love your child just as much as you do” “we’ll rub her back if she’s having a hard time getting to sleep” “we’ll make sure if she falls to kiss it to make it better” “we’ll clap and make a big scene when she uses the big girl potty.” They haven’t been with her since she was 10 weeks old and know all her little nuances.

As I grab a tissue and wipe my tears, I take a deep breath to reassure myself, “she’s fine!” She’s tough, she can handle the changes. She won’t hate me for the rest of her life. There will be tough days but there will be more good days. It will just take some time to get used to for all of us.

Kate Mize is a Service Excellence Coach with Texas Health Resources who is juggling a new job and an almost two-year-old daughter with another daughter due in May.