Pressure to Put 3-Year-Old in Daycare

Dear parent,

Always follow your heart. Your life and your child’s life is not a public affair, nor up for a majority vote. Your decisions are not up to anyone’s approval either. You are his mother and so you are the one who is going to represent what is best for your child according to you and to the way you decide to raise him.

There is nothing that a daycare offers that can fulfill your child’s needs better than being raised by his own mother and father. Whatever he learns there, he can learn better, easier and in the optimal time for him, when free from schooling. It is the children at daycare who are missing the great joy and security of growing up with their parents. They lose the ability to be authentically themselves and the peace that comes from being with those who love them unconditionally. 

The best social skills are learned from relating to socially loving and capable adults in a one-on-one relationship. Your son is spared all the unhealthy and unnatural social dynamics that result of peers and groups. Children are not meant to be in groups or with peers. Being with peers create dependency on authority and the learning of bad social skills. Mother and child never pull toys out of each other’s hands, scream, and hit. Your child learns social skills from a socially skillful and loving adult. As a result, he also experiences himself as socially able because with adults, he succeeds, rather than fail to relate and to play.

If Denmark is progressive enough to allow mothers time off with their babies, it is time parents create a new direction of keeping children growing, as nature intended, with mother, father and in the community while with mother and father.

As for your relatives and friends, it is not their business, and it is up to you to elicit their respect by avoiding defending your position or getting into arguments with them. They need not be convinced. It is not up to them. Read my answer to the subject of relatives here: http://mothering.com/how-explain-conditioning-about-parenting

As your child grows older, I hope you can find even one other family to connect with, so you may feel supported and can continue to keep your child close and free to grow up at his own pace. Whatever is learned in schools, is learned with much more ease by a person who feels secure, powerful and emotionally free.

Warmly, Naomi Aldort, http://authenticparent.com