The thing to know about my child is that in her nearly 16 months on this planet she has never once willingly said “dada” in front of her father. She just won’t. One time, she said it to me when R. was in a nearby room, but the look on her face told me, “Look, mama, that was clearly an accident. I don’t want the guy to get his hopes up. I’m probably not going to make that mistake again.”
It's not that she can’t say it—it’s simply that she refuses. So, imagine what it was like for R., who knows his child is low-level fucking with him, to hear “dada” from his daughter for the very first time when she was sobbing, clinging to his legs and begging him not to leave her at daycare. His heart was undoubtedly wrenched.
I asked him about it later. “Was there any part of you that was like…’of course you’re pulling out the big guns now, Bean’?” R. confirmed. “Oh, definitely. She knew what she was doing.” Now, if you’re reading this and don’t think kids can be incredibly manipulative (especially with their loved ones), then you haven’t spent a lot of time around kids. Children are outright masterful at pushing the right combination of buttons to make their parents feel and act a certain kind of way.
I remember from my own childhood that getting my exhausted dad to play with us after a long day at the office was as easy as putting on the puppy eyes and saying, “but you never spend any time with us!” Since the day they’re born, our children are watching us like hawks. Yes, they’re learning about the world and how to navigate it, but they’re also mirroring our mannerisms, studying our weaknesses and analyzing the best ways to get what they want from us.
It's not all bad. Before kids find their words, we need their screams and cries to tell us that their diapers are wet or they’re hungry or they don’t feel good. E., for example, has figured out that if she wants to go outside, she’s going to need someone to accompany her, and that person needs to wear shoes. So, when she wants to go outside, she’ll bring us our shoes and then point to the door.
But she’s also learned that refusing to say “dada” benefits her more than saying it. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked to discover that she was saving the big reveal for precisely this type of emotionally volatile moment. I don’t think I’m giving her too much credit to say that E. realized long ago that not saying “mama” wasn’t going to impact me as much as torturing her dad would.
As much as I’ve become a far more emotional person in the wake of my child’s birth, I’m not the more emotional parent. I laugh at her extremely dramatic tantrums. I’m not fazed by her affinity for sitting in puddles or rubbing mud all over herself. I don’t get worked up when she vomits all over me in front of a plane full of people. I tend to be very logical about these sorts of things. My feelings are generally one step removed.
Which is why I’m struggling to understand how my first two days of Total Bean Freedom have caused me to feel so…unmoored. Granted, there have been some mitigating factors. While I wasn’t the one who had to suffer through emotionally fraught drop-offs the last two days (bless my dear husband), I did pick her up yesterday and got to experience her upset sniffles. The teachers said she’d cried about 50 percent of the day. There was play and laughing, but she also got so worked up that she sniffled all the way through nap time, even when she was asleep. She sniffled 90 percent of the car ride home.
I’m not made of steel, people! That shit feels sad. Not enough to take her out of daycare or sacrifice my writing time, but enough to feel weird about this whole thing. Because this isn’t mom guilt exactly. I don’t feel bad, per se, even though that’s how I’ve been articulating it to R. What I’m actually experiencing is disappointment. I was hoping that the Bean would thrive in daycare right away.
There was some limited evidence to suggest this might be the case. Before we started her full time, E. got two Discovery Days where she attended the Toddler 1 class for a couple hours. The first day, the Bean was the Queen of Daycare. She didn’t even look back at us when we dropped her off, much less shed a goddamn tear. Zero waves. Then, we got tons of photos of her living her best life: playing with an orange ball, pointing to a palm tree in the book during story time, eating applesauce with a spoon while donning an outfit-saving smock.
The next day was less spectacular, as there was a clear moment of “are you guys serious? I’ve got to do all this shit again? How long do I have to keep entertaining these people?” No photos were sent. The backlog of tears from day one co-mingled with the ones she mustered up specifically for day two. To be fair, we were a little overconfident that second day and opted not to arm her with a pacifier in case of emergencies. That was our bad.
Still, I remained hopeful that the Bean would rally. I believe she still will. It has only been two days, after all, and as I write this, R. and I are cracking up watching her on the livestream. After she finished her snack, she picked up her sippy cup, waved goodbye to the teacher and went to stand at the door like she had a meeting to get to and this whole group activity was preventing her from closing some end-of-the-week deals she’d been working on since Monday. Thwarted from leaving, she decided to gather some books, rip another from the hands of her nearest peer and wander aimlessly around the space with a significant portion of the classroom library. The unshakeable confidence of this baby is hilarious to me. She’s going to be just fine.
But back to me and my feelings. I don’t usually dedicate two newsletters to parenting in one week because I don’t like writing (or thinking) about being a mom every second of every day. It’s not that interesting to me, and I know it isn’t the primary reason most of you subscribe to Yes, Misstrix. That said, these topics are big on my mind this week. Pretending otherwise would be disingenuous. So, here we are.
If you listened to the audio companion on Tuesday, you know that I don’t believe in making parenting harder than it needs to be. I believe that we should bring ease to this very challenging job whenever we can. I make the case for avoiding “the shoulds,” releasing guilt about how you’re showing up as a parent and opting to focus on the aspects of child-raising that bring you joy. I stand by everything I said. I truly am not trying to win the award for Mother Who Did the Most. Instead, I care more about being the best mama I can, and that’s a whole kind of horse of a different color.
And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t feel like a “bad mom” for putting my kid in daycare. I don’t even miss her that much when she’s gone. I love having space for the things I need and want to do. I’m outright delighted that I can now be super present when she’s around because I’m not thinking about all the things I need to do the next time she’s unconscious.
But I’m equally aware that I want her to have a joyful day, too. That’s the part that limits how free I feel now. Until she settles in, I’m probably going to spend more time peaking in on her classroom than I might normally, obsessing about what she’s up to and if she seems happy. I’ll breathe a little deeper when we’re both thriving in our new routines. Logically, I know it’s OK if all of this takes more than two days. I’m simply waiting for my heart to catch up to my head.
For the moment, though, R. is enjoying his newfound status as “dada” (even if that status only becomes apparent in times of distress), and I’m finding peace in the transition of what being a mama looks like these days. We’re in the trenches, but I’m starting to see the first signs of the white flag. No one has the energy to fight change indefinitely. Soon enough, E. will stop guilting us about leaving, and start handing us our shoes and showing us the door.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix