I am so conflicted….

Two minutes into the car ride I know that he will be quietly content. When we pull into the parking lot I know that a cat-that-ate the canary grin will cross his lips. As we walk into the building I know that he will greet everyone he sees with a shy “hehrow”. Upon entering the classroom I know that his classmates will raise a collective shout of his name as if signaling to one another that Norm has come to take his place at the bar on Cheers. That will make me smile outwardly, and, on the inside it will make me beam with pride to know that my sweet, cautious little guy is so well-liked by his 2 & 3 year old peers. I will be comfortable leaving him to go spend the day with my sister because I know that he is in a high-quality daycare where he is looked after by women who love him; almost to a fault. I know that when I go to pick him up this afternoon I will be there for at least ½ hour trying to get him to leave. But right now none of that matters.

Right now, he is having a fit to end all fits.

Until I took out his daycare shoes he was having a typical morning. But upon seeing the shoes that he only wears to daycare, he slumped down onto the couch. He said the ubiquitous, “No, Mommy”. Then, he lay down on the couch and proceeded to kick his feet in order to make it more difficult to put the shoes on. When we aren’t going to daycare he asks to wear the cool Elmo sneakers that light up as he walks, but on daycare day, they are a signal, a red cape in front of a bull. Maybe I am too matter of fact about putting the shoes on, perhaps I should hold him and tell him that it will be o.k., but I think that might just make things worse, so I don’t. He says, “No, night night”, and I ask him if he’d rather go back to bed than go to daycare. I am astonished every time that he says YES. I get his things together and carry him out to the car. I put him down as I struggle to get all of his gear inside. He falls to his knees in the wet grass in protest. I pick him up and try to put his rigid body into the car seat. He screams, he cries. I am sure my neighbors are commenting on what a horrible mother I am.

As my time with him...with 2 days per week to myself...without being torn between giving too much time to my outside job or taking too much time from my outside job...all dwindle as the summer winds down, I wonder whether sending him to daycare this summer was a mistake. At the time, we thought it would help him stay in the routine. This is what the psychologist in me says to do, but the mommy? She just wants to tell her little boy that it’s all right; he doesn’t have to go if he doesn’t want to. Maybe that is what I should do for the next three weeks, but then what happens four weeks from now when he has to go back?