Let’s get this out of the way: I love my child very much and am deeply invested in her safety and happiness. God, you know an article is going to be a doozy when you’ve got to put that disclaimer up the top.
A few years ago, by some mystic coincidence, a number of my friends all had babies around the same time. It was somewhat of a trend – like saying “hot girl summer” or going to Italy, except this one came with the lifelong consequence of a human being.
As the babies grow (did you know they did that?), we find ourselves tackling the different stages of toddler development all at the same time. Usually, this involves the parents with older kids lying to the parents of younger kids about how long sleep regressions last and what things are just a phase.
The most recent of these developments has been the slow transition to placing children in daycare.
This is a difficult decision, both emotionally and financially. Part of you feels like a failure for having to waste your time on pointless frivolities like working 40 hours a week so that you could afford to feed the baby, not to mention the hours of daycare (and all of a sudden we’re stuck in a vortex).
You tell yourself things to help put your child at the back of your mind through the workday: It’s better this way. They’re learning to socialise. They’re making friends. They are being engaged and stimulated in ways that you simply wouldn’t be able to replicate, were you at home juggling parenthood and a career. It’s good, it’s fine, stop worrying about it. It’s fine.
The advantage the modern parent has now is a constantly connected world. This is also one of the worst things about being a modern parent.
Many daycare groups now have closed Instagram pages where you can see photos of your child throughout the day and feel like a monster as you skip past the other boring kids on the way to your perfect angel. Some daycares have daily emails with short essays on exactly what your child has been up to today. They have WhatsApp groups to share useful information, by which I mean to slowly – with a 100% certainty – devolve into weird social experiments with at least three off-shoot side chats to discuss the freaks in the main chat.
Then, there’s the app.
The Daycare App is a fairly recent phenomena. It always has some weird name like BLOMP or FADDU, something that sounds like it’s a one-world-company in a schlock sci-fi film. Outwardly, they’re simple programs designed to help you book in your sessions and track payments. Great, easy.
They also offer instant communication with your daycare provider, and I can only hope this comes with hazard pay, because speaking for myself (and every single other parent ever), we are completely nuts. Given the opportunity, we will ruin your life with a series of pointless, in-depth questions so that we can get enough insight to drown our guilt.
It’s part of the reason why daycare providers’ pay packets, in a just world, would resemble the kind of hauls of gold and precious gems previously collected by Spanish kings.
All of these features are perhaps a bit much, but nevertheless practical enough to be justifiable. It’s all the “bonus features” that send these things into the realm of the dystopic.
Friends have received apps that claim they provide real-time updates on your child as well as “tracking their stats”, like they’re an NBA player rather than a child at playtime. And look: I am a degenerate. If you give me a chance to place a same-game multi on my child’s daycare performance, I’m going to do it. I’m betting on the under for lunch eaten, the over for toys put in her mouth, and if the conditions are right she might just lodge a triple-double of slides down the slippery dip, bouncy balls kicked and tears in the sand pit.
There are invasive fears for me. I do not know these companies. I do not wish them to be involved in raising my child. We are navigating raising a generation with a digital footprint and it still isn’t clear just what the consequences for all this might be.
I’m one of those unfortunate people addicted to statistics. I’m tracking my calories, my steps, my sleep, my oxygen intake, my impure thoughts per minute index. If it’s possible to assign a numerical value to it, I’ve done it, and I’ve obsessed over how to move that number up or down.
That’s not something I want for my child. I want development to move at its own pace. I want her to become a person, not a draft prospect for the upcoming season.
It’s why I’m choosing to opt out. Except you can’t. None of us can. I’m going to download it like everyone else and click “I Accept” without actually reading any of the disclaimers and hope that this doesn’t come back to bite me. That’s modern parenting.
James Colley is the head writer of Gruen and Question Everything as well as the author of The Next Big Thing via Pantera Press
Daycare apps allow you to track your child like an NBA player. I want to opt out – but I can’t
8
1
29.02.2024
Let’s get this out of the way: I love my child very much and am deeply invested in her safety and happiness. God, you know an article is going to be a doozy when you’ve got to put that disclaimer up the top.
A few years ago, by some mystic coincidence, a number of my friends all had babies around the same time. It was somewhat of a trend – like saying “hot girl summer” or going to Italy, except this one came with the lifelong consequence of a human being.
As the babies grow (did you know they did that?), we find ourselves tackling the different stages of toddler development all at the same time. Usually, this involves the parents with older kids lying to the parents of younger kids about how long sleep regressions last and what things are just a phase.
The most recent of these developments has been the slow transition to placing children in daycare.
This is a difficult decision, both emotionally and financially. Part of you feels like a failure for having to waste your time on pointless frivolities like working 40 hours a week so that you could afford to feed the baby, not to mention the hours of daycare (and all of a sudden we’re stuck in a vortex).
You tell yourself things to help put your child at the........
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