But my son is already awesome

There’s big news around our house:  my husband has taken a part time job.  He wasn’t looking for work, but a job that he is perfectly suited for and enjoys tremendously came up, and when such a grand door is opened, you’d have to be a fool not to walk through it.  So he walked on through.

And this means that Jack is spending about ten hours a week in daycare.

We’ve been sharing this good news with family and friends, but a common reaction that we are getting was totally unexpected:

Daycare is going to be so good for Jack.

Jack is going to have such a great experience interacting with other kids at daycare.

He’ll learn so much at daycare.

Now hold the phone, here:  Jack interacts with other kids every week, and he interacts well.  We take frequent trips to the playground and library where he seeks out children his size.  He’s a regular at the YMCA’s nursery as well as the nursery at the church.  He’s not afraid to introduce himself (first and last name, every time), and he always, always shares his toys with them.  I can’t even recall a single incident where I’ve had to correct poor behavior when he’s played with other children.

And it isn’t just children, either:  he’s happy to strike up a conversation with an adult, and he’s at the point now where he can hold a pretty reasonable, albeit sometimes odd, conversation.

Daycare didn’t build that.

At first I was a little miffed at this apparently common perception that Jack somehow “needed” whatever daycare had to offer.  I firmly believe that kids “get” so much more than we realize.  They are constantly observing and soaking up everything they hear, see, touch, taste and feel.  Even if they can’t articulate it, they are still picking it up, without formal instruction by parents, teachers, or anyone.

So I took these comments personally – like we as his parents somehow were lacking.  Or, even worse, that Jack was lacking in some kind of social skills and needed daycare to correct it.

I realize that wasn’t their intention.

In fact, I suspect that my family and friends were actually just trying to reassure me that daycare wasn’t the end of the world.  To be honest, I never thought it was a bad thing.  It wasn’t what our family did, but that doesn’t make it bad.  Just different.  And now, daycare is something we do, on a limited basis.  It’s our new normal.

And Jack loves it.  But I promise, he was already a damn cool kid even before daycare.