No parent can dispute how much it warms the heart to hear, from a non-family member, that one’s child is wonderful and happy and always smiling.
That’s how it is with Claire. I can’t tell you the number of times that the daycare teachers have commented on the fact that whenever I drop Claire off, she is smiling and happy. Even some of the workers who aren’t her teachers – and haven’t been yet – have told me that she is an absolute delight. A teacher in one of the older rooms told me today that “Claire is the talk of the daycare”, and in a good way.
And it’s true. She is almost always happy to go to daycare, and it’s rare that she is in any rush to get out of there. Obviously that confirms for me that we picked a good place for her to spend her days. The only times – outside that first month or so of daycare – that Claire has been unhappy about going to daycare have been the few occasions when she has been sick.
This isn’t to say that she is a perfect little angel all of the time. Trust me – she has her fair share of all-out screaming temper tantrums that lead to time-outs. She is stubborn and she doesn’t take ‘no’ lying down. Sometimes, when she is going through a particularly bad bout of tantrums, I shake my head in confusion and dismay when her teachers tell me how pleasant she has been all day, but I know it’s because she knows that she can let it all out with us because she’s safe and loved in a way that only parents can love a child.
And yet, she is also funny and loving and playful and has a mind brimming over with imagination. She loves to make others laugh, and she’s very talented at doing it too. And it puts an extra spring in my step when someone else sees how special she is too.
