Mary P is Not Amused
A lot of you think I’m some sort of paragon of patience who never loses her temper. Any of my family reading this are falling all over themselves laughing. (Stop it, you lot, I can hear you from here!)
But, just so you know I do lose my temper once in a while, go check out today’s Partners in Parenting.
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© 2006, Mary P
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It's Not All Mary Poppins 
Oh Mary, you are so awesome. You validated my feelings and then some. Here I thought I should be walking on tippy toes because the child giver is so “loving” and “nurturing.” THANKS for making me realize she was putting her own feelings/needs first before my baby’s. Phew, what a relief. I read your entire answer to my husbad. I will let it sink in. I know he wants what’s best for her too. Today, as on Fridays she’s home with Daddy (my Husband), she went to bed right at 9 and slept until Noon. She must have been tired from yesterday, normally she wakes up at 11am. But I wanted her to get as much sleep as she needed according to her own body. And I only had to go in her bedroom only once. She cried maybe for about a minute.
Mary, I had to check who wrote the post because it didn’t sound like you usually would!
On a slight aside, I’ve been watching a documentary on a longitudinal study being done on some families in Melbourne. One of the things I was told about daycare is that it stresses babies out, raises their cortisol levels and makes them susceptible to ADHD (nice, huh, considering we didn’t have much of a choice in the first place). Anyway, the study found that it wasn’t a matter of daycare vs homecare. Some stay-at-home kids had more unusual cortisol levels than some daycare kids, depending on their circumstances. There’s really no point to this except that it’s nice to see a study that validates the fact that there’s no one set answer to the question of childcare vs homecare.
Mary, I love that you get right to the root of the problem so that it can be fixed.
Mamabear: Thank you! I was a little uncertain how you’d respond: after all, this is someone you chose after careful consideration, and as I said in the post, I do think she’s likely well-intentioned. However, she has behaved badly, she’s created a problem, and she is probably not capable of fixing it. And that gives YOU a problem. I wanted you to see the problem from a different perspective, but I knew I ran the risk of offending you.
I hope you and your husband soon come to an agreement that will work for all three of you. (You, baby, and dad.)
Kato+: I’ve heard the rumours of cortisol levels, too. As far as I understand it, cortisol levels have to be significantly elevated for a long time – months on end – for it to have long-term effects on the children. That could happen in a bad day care, for sure, but it’s not the norm. My cortisol levels were probably elevated Friday night, as I supervised a LOUD and boisterous adolescent Hallowe’en party, but I’m fine now. Really.
Stress has an unfairly negative reputation, anyway. I remember hearing a fellow give a talk on dealing with stress. His comment was that stress is a normal response to normal events. Complaining about all the stress in your life, he said, is like running into a room and complaining, “I have blood pressure! I have blood pressure!” Well, I should hope so. Your blood pressure (like your stress) goes up and down in response to exertions in your life, and (again, like stress) only becomes a problem when it’s too high for too long.
Mamacita Tina: My ability to get to the root of a problem has definitely improved over the years. I like to see that as one of the perks of aging.
This one was a no-brainer for me, though, because I am a caregiver. Whereas MamaBear was responding from her position as a mother, seeing a loving, nurturing woman caring for her child (and I’m sure she is these things), I was responding from the position of the caregiver, and seeing something quite different. I can’t imagine doing that to a client!
Good for you Mary! That woman was clearly eroding the baby’s ability to go to sleep on her own, which she’d obviously been doing happily until that time. That kind of “nurturing” will just increase her emotional dependence in negative ways. The fact that this spilled over into ruining Kikki’s quality time with her parents just makes it worse.