Taking My Daughter to Daycare for the First Time

Learning to Let Go | 🧸 No. 009

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Conveying my surprise to my wife via this selfie that our daughter actually napped with dad for once. October 2023.

Author’s Note: I wrote the first draft of this post in November of 2023.

I.

It’s my first time dropping my daughter off at daycare, and I feel like a monster.

I’m told this is a parental rite of passage. Variations of the following sentiment fail to comfort me: It’s harder for you than your child, so don’t worry—everything’s fine!

Supposedly, I’m taking the first step to setting my eighteen-month-old daughter up for success in life and school. She’s going to make a ton of friends.

I’m being a good dad—right?

II.

I quickly learn I’ve parked on the wrong side of the building. We’re off to a disorienting start.

She’s wearing a puffy green vest, a white long-sleeve t-shirt and floral tights tucked into green socks and her brother’s old pair of black Vans. Her bangs are frenzied, draped over her face like a copper curtain, and I feel like a failure for not taking her to get a haircut before her first day of school. I’m dropping her off looking like Cousin Itt.

While I unbuckle the harness on her carseat, I stupidly ask if she’s excited to go to school. “Ah dun, ah dun!” She informs me, waving her hand from side to side. In her estimation of things, we are good to drive back home and resume our normal day (i.e., the one where she cuddles with my wife and nurses, sweetly oblivious to the fact mommy has a full-time career and, that once you reach a certain age, it’s no longer about leisure time but labor time).

Say cheese! I get her out, and we take a selfie to send to mom, forever commemorating this special day where I abandon my daughter with strangers.

Confused about where I am and holding my daughter in my arms, I find my way to the daycare office, the small building with a lovely view of the cemetery across the street, yet another source of comfort on this momentous day: Memento mori.

The kindly older woman who enrolled our daughter last week and got her off that hellish waitlist volunteers to walk us to the classroom. We navigate the colorful hallways, everything awash in primary colors, and I wonder what all these smells are before deciding not to push this inquiry any further.

I don’t think my daughter fully understands what’s going on yet.

Walking into the classroom, I realize I haven’t been in a room with this many toddlers, ever. They’re numerous and very cute: Round faces glistening with a fresh coating of winter snot, looking at us quizzically from their adorably small tables and chairs. Someone is getting their diaper changed in the corner of the room and this helps provide the beginning of an answer to my earlier question about the smells.

I’m introduced to the two teachers responsible for watching over this cohort of tiny humans and future contributors to the U.S. economy, and I go to hand off my daughter, but, with her little floral legs wrapped around me like ivy, holding impressively firm fistfuls of my sweatshirt, she turns her attention away from the room and looks into my tired, bloodshot eyes.

In this moment, while it’s yet another Monday for everyone else, for me, time freezes, and I realize I am split in two: The logical part of me is somewhere else entirely, perhaps still meandering in the parking lot, while the emotional part of me inhabits this classroom, and I am nothing but a raw clumsy heart holding my precious little girl.

It’s hard to tell who isn’t letting go.

Now, it seems, fully understanding what’s about to happen, her lower lip goes nuclear: Pouting, quivering, wet like the pearl-shaped tears that begin to roll out from the corners of her eyes, and I’m leveled, destroyed, unmanned, and suddenly realize I’m in danger of crying too, which brings me a whole other level of psychic discomfort, and I remember I’ve never once seen my father cry, and I command myself to get it together because men don’t cry—right?—and, after all, me blubbering is totally not going to help one bit and will make for a very dubious first impression, indeed.

There’s nothing more familiar and banal than a toddler crying, but when it’s your child that’s crying, it’s something entirely different: It activates some primal, ancient wiring hooked up to the deepest parts of yourself, and your child’s pain—physical or emotional—pierces you in a way nothing else can.

One of her teachers tells me through kind brown eyes and a wide smile that it’s okay and most parents find it easiest to just set the child down and leave. In other words, put the kiddo down and get out the door while you still can and don’t look back lest you become a pillar of salt or, in my case, a histrionic display of unsightly daddy tears.

So, I look inside my soul and find some dark place with remaining space to stuff my feelings, and down they go, banging against the other baggage I have stored down there. I follow the teacher’s instructions to pry my daughter off me and set her down.

The moment her tiny feet make contact with the bright carpet and she stretches her arms out for me, I turnaround and flee like someone who has done something wrong and is afraid of being caught; the door rattles shut behind me but is unable to block out the sound of my daughter crying out for me—dahdee, dahdee!—or the teachers absurdly telling me over her tearful pleading to have a nice day.

My shoulders slumped, the smiling cartoon characters plastered on the walls watch me drag my feet down the hallway and step outside where I stand dumbfounded, forgetting I parked on the opposite side of the building.

III.

I pullover at the gas station near her daycare: Should I go back and get her? Is that weird? Or is daycare weird? No, I’m weird.

Sitting there, I try to sort out what the right thing to do is.

I remember a story my dad always told me.

He described taking me to daycare and watching as I went to the corner of the room and stood by myself, crying. Despite being threatened by his boss that a swift firing could be in his future if he missed more work, dad scooped me up, and we left. I just couldn’t leave you alone like that.

That’s my dad in a nutshell: Overprotective, loving, always wanting to save me from the pains of the world no matter how commonplace and ultimately innocuous those everyday evils might be.

Right or wrong, I’m beyond judging my dad about his decision. I simply understand and empathize. It turns out the whole daycare thing requires you to go against all your instincts as a parent: Please walk away from your toddler while they stand there crying with outstretched arms and ignore their yelps for you to come back and instead leave them with strangers for about nine hours five days a week.

I start up the car and drive to work feeling like the worst dad in the entire world.

No one told me so much of being a parent involves learning and knowing when to let go.

IV.

When I arrive later that afternoon to pick my daughter up, I find her post-nap, lying on her cot, wide awake, staring at the door. We see each other and she begins to cry.

The teachers tell me not to be fooled by these tears as I scoop her up because she did, in fact, have an awesome day, and this crying at drop off and pick up is totally normal and to be expected.

I ignore them.

My daughter and I embrace. I hold her tightly to my chest and kiss her soft, warm forehead.

It feels like we both conquered something today.