Daycare Blues

We're still sad about Dutch's daycare. The teachers don't even say hi to her in the morning half the time. Tomorrow I'm pointlessly going to visit a couple of swanky limited-hours preschools, apparently just to torture myself, since we can't afford it AND we need more hours than they offer. I don't know why I'm doing it. Maybe to remind myself that there is better childcare out there, so I can be more aggressive about demanding better from the current place. Dutch is much happier there than she used to be, but she's still not happy, and we don't like what we see in our limited experience with these teachers. I also read an article that made a deep impression on me that said that kids whine because they are sad and brimming with feelings. Dutch became such a whiny mess because her daycare situation was making her sad, and that made her teachers angry, which made her whinier... ick. There's nothing wrong with the daycare itself, but the teachers in her class are a bad combination with her and with eachother. Anyway, the fact is that we cannot afford anything better, so it's pointless to think about all the lovely places where she could be spending her time learning to weave and to cook organic strudel. The situation underlines some of the cruelties of the American childcare nonsystem - Dutch is being punished for her parents' failures (to get rich, mostly) by getting crappy care. She is vastly better off than most kids being punished for their parents' failures, because she reaps the benefits of all the advantages her parents have had (and her childcare is really not THAT bad), and it's still bumming me out. Kids are such gorgeous little explosions of sensation and discovery, and the fact that so many of them are crushed by the weight of their inheritance before they even learn to walk is unconscionable. I used to volunteer at Head Start, and the odds stacked against those extremely small people made me dizzy. (And then I read some Jonathan Kozol books and felt even worse.)

So all of you should support the federal Family and Workplace Balancing Act of 2007 (H.R.2392), which aims "to improve the lives of working families by providing family and medical need assistance, child care assistance, in-school and afterschool assistance, family care assistance, and encouraging the establishment of family-friendly workplaces. " Go to the Thomas webpage and check to see if your reps are on the list of cosponsors. If they're not, give them a call and ask them to cosponsor this bill, because it's important. (Even if you don't have kids, and even if you don't even LIKE kids, it's important. Somebody's going to have to take care of you when you get old, after all, and it would be nice if it was somebody who had decent social support when they were a kid, wouldn't it?) I'd like to see every kid in high-quality childcare that doesn't bankrupt their parents. I'd really like to see that in my lifetime in this country, even if not everybody gets organic strudel.