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I am internally irate at something important to me that I have absolutely NO control over.  My youngest grandson *Alex has been thrown to the wolves, the sharks, the buzzards (as far as I can see) today into his first full day at a large daycare since he was 14 months old.  He is a little tiny precious human being who only turned three last month, July 20, 2015.

I left my Arizona-Mexican borderline home October 2013 to come up here to TAKE him out of daycare, to care for him weekdays 9-10 hours here in my tiny dark apartment.  (Me, who HATES cities, hates light and noise pollution, desperately needs beauty, peace and quiet, to go outdoors comfortably every day of the year, to have gardens and a yard to work in, WINDOWS, sunlight – ANY kind of LIGHT — came here to sentence myself to this imprisonment so that I could assist this little boy become his whole, beautiful clear and strong self — and to CONNECT to that self.  To KNOW who he is.  Unequivocally for the rest of his LIFE.

I am seething.  Plain and simple.  I have told and told and TOLD my daughter what the  human development experts are saying about how primary loving safe and secure attachments with caregivers is ESSENTIAL to the full healthy growth and development of infants and children.  Does she LISTEN to me?  Nope.

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SEE:

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

Aug 15, 2006

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I do not tend to see myself as an “angry” person, but I AM angry now.  Why is my daughter’s generation of mothers into whose care the lives of their offspring have been entrusted, BUYING the absolute LIE that “early learning” in day care situations is GOOD for little people?

It is a myth.  An urban legend.  Harmful in nearly all cases except when a little one is under threat or siege from harm within its own home or is part of a family with special needs that prevent adequate enrichment of offspring within the home  — where day care then becomes the only hope such a little one might have to get its needs truly met.

Certainly no more than a short supervised “play date” for perhaps two hours a week is all Alex needs to become acquainted with himself as a person growing into being a peer – eventually.  I am here to continue taking care of my grandson.  And there he is at this moment – in Crazyville learning how to be a zombie Crazyville citizen right along with all the other soul-lost citizens of this massive materialist consumeristic culture called America.

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Personally I think it is a horrific indication of ill health in a civilization when women bring children into the world and abandon them at birth into the care of strangers.  Yes, there are SOME extenuating circumstances, but my guess is that in at least 85% of cases where little ones under the age of 5 are in extended hour daily care away from their mother, or even their father, other arrangements COULD be made to provide ATTACHMENT-based LOVING care for those children.

Sacrifice for one’s offspring?  No!

Perhaps SUFFER and sacrifice?  Absolutely NOT!

Materialistic culture?  Of course it is perfectly legitimate to PAY for someone else to do the job especially mothers are no longer one bit willing to do.  Even my daughter told me, “If I had to stay home and take care of my children I would go stark raving mad!”

And — Tell me again — exactly why did you want to bring children into the world AT ALL?

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Growing up takes time.  Slow, intimate time.  We are the most complex beings in creation.  My grandson is not ready to “come out of the oven.”  I am so mad at what my daughter and her husband are doing to Alex right this very moment I could spit nails.  He, as a little tiny person, is having his just-beginning-to-grow-SELF overwhelmed in an environment – no matter how “professional” and “good care” it might be (or expensive) — is toxic to my grandson at this stage of his development.

My lease on this tiny apartment would have been up five days from now.  If it had been time, if it had been my destiny, I could have left this Fargo, ND winter hell (for me) and returned to Arizona.  Something within told me to sign another year’s lease.  So a week ago I did.  On my 65th birthday I will be free to leave here.

In the meantime my daughter and her husband have been given the option to let me take care of Alex until he is at least just-turned-four — and a little more able to tolerate without gross harm to tolerate the madness (and wrongness) of daycare.  Before God, I am doing my part.  Before God, Alex’s parents?

I am certainly not their final judge.  But I am Grandmother.

Maybe for a while I should pretend, imagine, that I’m not one.  Is that what mothers can do when they abandon their very young children into day cares?  If they can do it, can I do it?

I wonder.

It’s not like I ASKED to be “made” a grandmother.  Do we get “made” IN TO grandmothers?  I didn’t ASK for any of this!  I know quite a few women who say being a grandmother is so painful that if they had known this was the way things would turn out they would never have had any children in the first place.

Serious.  Serious stuff.

It is very hard, I am finding, to adjust to such an important change as grandparenting is when I have no real power, no say, no choice — only a massive investment of love.

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