Should We Put Our Kid in Daycare?

Now that Little Matchstick is more than a year old, other parents and our family members have started asking, “are you putting him in daycare?”

When it comes to raising kids, everyone and their distant influencer cousin has an opinion. They range from “daycare will turn your kid into a resilient genius” to “you’re leaving your precious baby in a shark tank”.

Of course, most parents don’t even have a choice. If both parents need to work, your kids have to go to daycare. The decision of “to daycare or not to daycare” is a privilege, and we’re grateful to have the choice.  

Despite many family members waxing poetic about the benefits of daycare, I’m still not convinced. Maybe it’s because my Dad left me with an abusive daycare teacher, who terrified me so much I started shaking and crying as soon as I saw her (according to him). He continued sending me there because he thought this would build resilience. Since this happened before the age of 5, I don’t remember it and have no idea whether it scarred me for life or made me stronger.

So, not being able to rely on my experience, I had to rely on research. Interestingly, while researching the benefits of daycare, I discovered the opposite is true. Specifically for kids under the age of 3.

Articles like this one from Psychology Today and Medium, show that daycare, although great for female empowerment, isn’t so great for children’s wellbeing.

Basically, the takeaway is that children under 3 aren’t developed enough to engage in parallel play with other kids, and as a result can’t benefit from the social interaction yet. They tend to play alongside other children with one-to-one adult support. At this stage, what’s most important is forming a secure attachment with one or two stable, consistent adults. Since daycare can’t provide this optimal one-to-one ratio and instead have many children in a large room with different caregivers, this causes stress to the child, resulting in aggressive behaviour later.

This Canadian study found that extensive hours in daycare increases rates of aggression, anxiety, and hyperactivity 3 times as much in kids who attended daycare compared to their siblings who didn’t. Another Study found higher levels of cortisol in daycare children than those who stayed home. The longer the hours, the worse the outcome. Those who attended more frequently but had shorter days fared better (eg 5 half days of daycare is better than 3 full days). Also, the lower the child-to-caregiver ratio, the better. The faster and more often the children could get back to their parents to “recharge”, the better.

The point of these articles isn’t to politicize daycare or to make parents feel bad about putting their kids there (especially since many have no choice), but to call into question the age-old belief that “daycare is good for skills development and socialization”.

Plus, there are caveats. If the stay-at-home parent is stressed out, or the home environment is broken, then daycare would be better, even with a higher child to caregiver ratio. If you have caregiver grandparents that rely on screen time or believe in outdated child safety standards, daycare might be better.

That said, I won’t take this scientific research as gospel, because just like breastfeeding, only following what’s best for your child while ignoring your own wellbeing isn’t the answer. Happy parents beget happy children. There needs to be a balance because your mental wellbeing affects them.

So, I decided to make a Pros/Cons list:

Pros

• The biggest pro I’ve heard is that daycare socializes you kid and teaches them valuable skills like sharing and speech development, etc. But this is based on anecdotal evidence and feelings from other parents, not science.

• In Canada there are subsidized daycare spots for $10/day, and if you put yourself on a gazillion waiting lists, you might get a chance in 2-3 years. This would make it a no-brainer financially because even the tax-free Canada Child Benefit could cover it, so it’s like getting free daycare (assuming your income after retirement is low enough that you’re not getting the CCB clawed back)

• Putting LMS in daycare would do wonders for my relationship. While Wanderer and I work great as a team, after too many sleep-deprived nights, yelling matches ensue. Getting 7-8 hours of my day back would help us focus on our relationship and concentrate more on passion projects (like this blog!). Right now, we’re making it work by taking turns watching him every other day, while the other person writes, but getting a full day back to do whatever we want would be heavenly.

• I used to be able to hike Macchu Picchu for 4 hours at high attitudes with thin air.  Now I can’t even push my son’s stroller to the grocery store on perfectly flat ground without being winded. The only thing getting worked out these days is my jaw when I pound back copious amounts of junk food after his bedtime as a reward. Full time daycare would give me time to work out.

Cons

• Studies have shown that full time daycare can negatively impact kids under the age of 3.

• Taking up a subsidized spot from another child. I feel guilty about this, since other parents need these spots way more than I do. I could put him in one without the subsidies and just pay more. Financially it makes no sense unless the income from my passion projects covers it, in which case, I’m paying to work more.

• Travel. This is a very “us” consideration and probably won’t apply to other parents. If he’s in full time daycare, we won’t be allowed to take him out for months at a time, so we’ll only be able to travel for a few weeks a year. That’s not going to scratch our itchy feet (ok that sounds gross when I type it out).

• One of the biggest complains from other parents with kids in daycare is getting sick ALL THE TIME! Daycare is one giant petri dish so our son will likely bring home all sorts of diseases. No thanks.
• I speak to LMS in Mandarin 90% of the time and, as a result, most of his first words are in Mandarin. That’s how he currently prefers to communicate. I know that will change later on, but I want him to get as much exposure as possible and being at daycare for most of the day wouldn’t give him that.

As an experiment, I recently tried a flexible daycare, putting LMS in for a few days over a month. He didn’t exact “thrive” in that environment like other people said their kids did, but he didn’t suffer either. This is because LMS has an easygoing personality, doesn’t cry for long, and can nap anywhere. The teacher said he did great, napped with minimal fussing, and got along with the other kids.

However, he still burst into tears when I came to pick him up at the end of the day and ran toward me so fast, he nearly knocked over another kid. When I picked him up, he clung to me and gave me the biggest kiss. So, it did seem like there was some separation anxiety. But he was also happy to see his teachers the following week and didn’t cry when I left, so maybe it’s also just a phase of adjustment? Keep in mind, this daycare had stellar reviews, was recommended by many parents, has a good an adult to child ratio for toddlers so I’m not worried about their quality of care.

Sadly, this flexible, part time daycare has shutdown recently since it couldn’t sustain itself financially, so our only option now is full time daycare. In fact, due to the government subsidies, pretty much all daycares that used to have part time options have now gone full time. If you know of any part time daycares in Toronto or Vancouver, let me know in the comments below.

For now, we’re debating between using family and part time babysitters to give us a break occasionally or putting LMS into full time daycare.

What do you think?  Should we put LMS into full time daycare?  

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