They were holding her back physically, so that she could not leave the room and run after me. So that I could leave and go “work”. She cried intensely. She so did not want to stay there, not like this, not now. And more than once in the past I indeed just went ahead and left, not knowing what else to do, and wanting to get to this looong list of things I’m so keen to work on (and also to get some peace of mind from a few hours without children). It always felt crushing, and I usually had a hard time focusing on anything for the next few hours.
This time I had the spiritual strength to not look (and walk) away, but to stay in this painful situation, and I had more grounding in what I want and what I don’t want. I want to be in dialogue with my children. And by “dialogue” I mean expressing what is important to me to them and listening and being responsive to what they express, which can include words, but other forms of expression also totally work. And physically forcing them to stay somewhere if they clearly and unmistakenly express a very strong “no” is not what I want. So I told those holding her to not hold her back and we went into a quiet corner.
What was the outcome? Eventually, she stayed. It was tough for her, it required a lot of her strength, she still cried, but no one was holding her back. I stayed with her outside the room, long enough to later come late to an appointment. We cuddled, I checked with her why she did not want to go in, I shared (again and again) that I really, really want to leave now. I asked her for suggestions on what else we could do. In the end, we agreed that she would stay home (with grandma) the next day, and that was good enough for her. I felt shaky, on my way to my appointment on my bicycle I cried a tiny bit.
The uncomfortable truth for me here is that our societal structures, in this case the combination of nuclear families + daycares, are set up in such a way, that we prioritize the adults’ needs over the children’s, and that using physical force to keep children in the daycare is part of an implict agreement and most adults are okay with. And it might be hard to read, but to me that is what prisons are.
To be clear, this particular daycare is in so many ways amazing, and I totally do think that the children have an amazing time there on most days. I totally trust everyone working there that they want the best for the children. And I also totally don’t think that dialoging every morning with your children whether they go in or not is a good strategy (I did that for years, though). And this is also not about whether to keep children home or in daycares in general.
For me this is about finding ways to dance with out children the needs dance, to invite them into taking as much responsibility as they can, to distribute the stretch, to decide with them, and not over them, and to offer them experiences which grow their sense of agency and empowerment, and to not actively disempower them.