My daughter was fired from daycare!

(Best of 2024 Newsletter Series)

Where we live, there aren’t very many options for daycare.

They're often very expensive and very hard to get into, people have been on the waitlists for years with no avail.

When I got pregnant we were wondering how we would find daycare.

Luckily, Andrew's (my partner’s) coworker's wife owned a small daycare, and she agreed to let us have the next available spot.

That's the only reason we got in.

We were relieved to have this connection and this “in” that no one else had access to.

But Lena had some trouble adjusting, (as I hear is normal)... It could take a few months for her to get fully used to it.

But three months went by, then six months, and she still wasn’t feeling happy there.

She still was crying at drop off.

She still didn't want to be left.

She was very clingy and whiny most of the day.

We had tried several things, including staying with her for the first hour.

I sat with her, I played, I tried to help her feel safe.

Brought her toys, brought her things that smelled familiar, and things seemed to improve.

She seemed to be better at drop off, she wasn't crying so much, and things seemed to be looking up!

I would ask at the end of the day how she did, and the report would be great, everything went great!

Until we received the equivalent of a “bomb-dropped” email…

The random email on a Sunday Afternoon just said:

“Unfortunately we're gonna have to end Lena's care, and you have 30 days' notice” (With a little more legalese and fluffy language)

We were shocked, surprised, and angry.

Like all the efforts to improve the situation didn’t work (even though we were told that everything was going well!)

Actually, nothing had worked at all.

And so the first instinct is to feel shocked and appalled by this message.

That was definitely my first response.

This got me thinking about my clients when they get laid off and sometimes the feelings are similar.

A lot of the times it can be just like this experience was for me, you know, very blind sighting, very surprising, like no idea this was coming, thinking the problem had been resolved, but really, the other person didn't feel that way, and they hadn't communicated that.

So this is like the stages of it news like this:

The first stage was anger.

The second stage is questioning and wanting more information, wanting to talk.

Understandably want some closure.

But of course, that's not normally possible.

Normally whoever's laid you off doesn't want to have a long, drawn-out discussion about why they're laying you off, right?

They just want it to be over. It's very uncomfortable for them.

They are probably even instructed by HR to not get into it.

They want it to be quick. And this is exactly how it happened with the email we received.

She wasn’t going to respond in a hurry…

She wasn't interested in engaging in any back-and-forth.

So after calming down a bit, my self-coached thoughts were:

“These things happen.

This wasn't our fault.I know I did everything I could to improve the situation and I could not know what she failed to communicate”

I even had some other things that I was going to try, (I had a toddler coach lined up to hire)...

But I didn't get a chance (or think I needed to) because I thought things were resolving.

So this thought process allowed me to move into “acceptance” within one day, and I wrote to her, and I said:

“Look, I understand this must be difficult for you, because you’re alone with 5 kids, and it must be a lot of work for you. While I do wish you would have felt comfortable enough to let me know what was really going on and how you really felt, that’s ok we will take notice and X will be our last day.”

I chose to empathize with her because that’s what felt good at the time…

Fast forward now, six + months.

We're in a new daycare!

My partner Andrew was able to find a new daycare, he got four daycare spot offers for great daycares!

He discovered a lot about where to find daycare lists that no one knew about because not all of them are on Google.

The hidden daycare market is much like the hidden job market! Who knew.??????

And this one, he just happened to be walking on the trail near our house with his mom, when she was visiting, and they happened to see these kids walking on the trail near our house tethered together in a line.

So they inquired about it, and that's how we found out about this daycare! Also bonus, 5 minutes from our house!

This daycare wasn’t even findable on Google!

It turns out they're a very large daycare, and they happened to have room for our daughter right when we needed it.

They offered us a spot first, and we didn't want to risk losing it, (because they have lots of people in line to take these spots) so we accepted, and now I can look back and see exactly what the problem was at the first daycare.

That first daycare was a terrible fit!

We now realize that that woman was not taking the kids outside at all, just expecting them to sit in one room with the same toys and entertain themselves.

Not doing any new activities, not doing anything different, and no fresh air or physical activity.

In the new daycare, they do different activities every single day.

They have fun things planned on a schedule that they stick to.

They have regular outdoor time twice a day and they go on walks and field trips.

They bring in insects from outside for the kids to touch, like caterpillars.

They do different kinds of painting.

They do different kinds of sensory activities.

They take them on field trips to different parks and the library.

And they have a great big playground divided up for younger kids and older kids.

They do so many things that my daughter loves it so much that sometimes she doesn't want to come home.??

She is excited to be dropped off.

She waves goodbye happily, and she has no problem just digging into whatever they're doing when she arrives.

This, my friends, is the story of getting fired from that daycare was the best thing that ever happened to our family.

And if I were to write to her now I would write the note quite differently.

I wouldn't say, “I understand.” I wouldn't say: “That must be hard for you.”

I would say…

When you don't take the kids outside and they don't have any new stimulation or physical activity, it makes perfect sense that some kids would find it hard to adjust.

A sincere thank you for letting us go because I don’t know that we would have known to leave on our own.

This story is for anyone who's been laid off or fired unexpectedly.

For anyone who was under the impression that things had improved but really they hadn’t, but no one bothered to tell you.

Because I truly do understand how frustrating that can be.

And I just want to say that this story is a sign that it is the best thing that ever is ever going to happen to you.

You just don't know it yet.

And yes sometimes that's really annoying to hear, especially if it's fresh.

So if you’re not quite ready to hear that yet, then go ahead and feel your anger.

It’s valid.

It’s necessary to feel the emotions through because that’s what being a human is all about.

We don’t get an exit ramp off the experience, no matter how badly we may wish for one on some days.

-Natalie

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