Ask Moxie

Q&A: More effects of this !@#$%^ war

Michelle writes:

"I'm freaking out a bit and I'm hoping you and the Internets might be able to help calm me down.  In the way of background, our 10 month old son is at an in-home daycare 4 days a week, and has been there since he was 3 months old.  The daycare was recommended to us by some friends who have a 5 year old and a 2 year old.  We have been thrilled with our provider, "Jenny," and she absolutely adores our son.

Jenny's husband returned from a year-long overseas deployment 2 months ago and Jenny has mentioned to me that they've been having trouble adjusting to having him home again.  Then, a couple of days ago, he just left, and Jenny hasn't heard from him since, short of a text message saying he was meeting with a counselor.  I found this out yesterday when I went to pick up my son.  He was in a swing-set baby swing, by himself, and Jenny was on the complete other side of the yard.  He was just hanging out, staring down at the ground.  He wasn't upset, but he was definitely all alone. When I saw him, I was really surprised and upset…  Jenny is usually right there with him.  I ran and grabbed him, and when I turned around to see why Jenny wasn't there, she was sitting in a chair staring off into space.  I asked her if she was okay and that's when she told me what happened with her husband.

I understand why she's distracted, but I worry that with her mind elsewhere she'll be unable to properly care for the kids.  I spoke with the friend of mine I mentioned above, and neither of her kids have said anything about things being "weird" at Jenny's, which makes me feel a bit better.  I also worry, though this is probably my new-mom paranoia coming out, that her husband is going to become violent and come to the house while the kids are there.  It sounds like the person who held his post prior to him arriving committed suicide, and that many of his superiors needed to be replaced because of the stress.

So, what I need, I guess, is some reassurance….  How have other people dealt with it when their daycare provider is having bad personal problems?  And I suspect I'm overreacting when I worry about her husband hurting the kids or hurting her in front of the kids, but I would love for someone to tell me to chill out about it…"

I am so, so, so sorry for Jenny and her husband that this is happening. They are not alone. I've been reading all kinds of articles about how returning military people are having major problems reintegrating into their families and lives when they come back from being deployed. The system is starting to get overwhelmed, and returning military people are slipping through the cracks and families are being destabilized.

It sounds like Jenny has no idea what to do about this. We have no idea if the husband is going to become violent. I wouldn't rule it out, but I also wouldn't say it'll definitely happen. The sooner they can get help, the better off everyone will be, and the more stable the situation will become.

I think the best resolution to the problem would be for you and the other parents to start poking at the system in your area to see what support services there are for returning soldiers and their families. I'd start looking around for EMDR therapists.(EMDR is the process that's showing the best results in treating PTSD effectively and rapidly.) And I'd call the VA and see if there are support groups for families. It's good that he's seeing a counselor. Very good, and seriously lessens the likelihood that he'll be violent. But we have to hope that the counselor knows what to do with PTSD cases.

Does anyone out there have experience with getting help from the system for a returning soldier and family? Jenny and her husband aren't the only ones that are dealing with this. And not everyone has a Michelle who's worried about it.

Bring our troops home NOW.

Babysitter monitoring idea

I know I can't be the only one who's seen a really good babysitter and wished I could let her employers know how lucky they are to ahve her, or, even more upsettingly, seen a babysitter doing something so bad that I wished I could warn her employers. The problem is that unless you know the family, there's virtually no way to know how to contact the parents, short of following the babysitter home.

The good people at The Opinionated Parent tipped me off to this interesting service from Howsmynanny.com. Basically, you sign up with the site, and they give you a license plate to put on your stroller so people can log in to the site and send compliments or danger reports about your babysitter. Read the Opinionated Parent post about it for the details (and to sign up to win a free membership to the service).

I think this raises some interesting issues. To me, putting a license plate on your stroller is so much better than doing a nannycam for all involved. It's clearly better for the babysitter, because who wants to be videotaped at work without her knowledge? Plus, great nanny skills can be noticed and complimented. And I think it's better for the employer parents, too, because it gives them a way to get confirmation of their feelings about the babysitter in a more professional way.

I can see two interesting issues with this service. The first is that it doesn't do anything for people whose babysitters are not out and about in a stroller. And if you do use a stroller all the time (like people do her ein NYC), you still have no way of knowing what's happening in places and situations in which the stroller isn't there. So users might not be comfortable with that. (To me, it all goes back to following your gut and not hiring someone you don't feel good about in the first place. And if the license plate helps you calm down general fears so that you can listen to your gut about that particular babysitter, then that's great.)

The more interesting issue I can see is what will happen if parents get reported to themselves for bad caretaking behavior! I think we've all done things that someone else might construe as bad caretaking. So how are you going to react if someone emails in about something "bad" you've done? I'd hope I'd be able to look at it and use it as a reality check (Was it something actually inappropriate that I shouldn't do again? Or just an immature or stressed-out reaction to loathesome child behavior that I won't repeat anyway? Or was the reporter off-base?). But if I doubted my own parenting skills, then this could open up a can of worms for me personally.

What do you think? Personally, I think it's the best solution I've seen yet for a situation that has so many inherent problems and sticky issues but is also really high-stakes. But it's not perfect.

A hypothetical

If your babysitter was a mean person, would you want to know?

I don't mean that she's mean to your child, but rather mean to other people--other babysitters, parents, and other kids? I saw a woman on the street this morning and physically shrank back, then realized that she's the babysitter of a kid when ran into sometimes at the playground, and that she'd been nasty to me and said some pretty vicious things about my older son to the child she cares for.

I think this is an interesting question, because it has so many dimensions. On the one hand, unless you're a clergyperson, I don't think there should be any kind of morals clause attached to employment. I don't care from an employer's perspective about what my babysitter does when she's not with my kids. (My babysitter and I were friends before she started caring for my kids, though, so I do care about what she does personally, so I may not be the best test care here.)

But, if the babysitter is with your child all day, she's modeling social behavior. And being nasty to other people is not something you want modeled to your child day in and day out.

Plus, no one will want to play with your child if they know they're in firing range of the babysitter. (Eventually we stopped going to playgrounds we knew she frequented, because I didn't want my child insulted just because he wouldn't hand over one of his toys when the other child demanded it.) So your kid's going to end up with fewer other kids to play with, even if your child is absolutely delightful.

Opinions? Or maybe I'm the only one who finds this an interesting topic. Remember that this isn't something that would directly harm your child, or some behavior that's risky. Just nastiness.

Potty training when you can't control all the variables

It seems like the parenting zeitgeist is all about potty training lately. I got three questions on the same day about potty training last week, and have been thinking about it a lot myself lately because my son will be three in May and isn't out of diapers. Then yesterday I spent the afternoon with my BFF and her husband and son, who is almost three and still not completely potty-trained.

As long-time readers know, my older son pretty much potty-trained himself. He started wanting to try it at 16 months and was just really into all things potty. He'd be our bathroom attendant and hand us the toilet paper, stop to observe dogs pooping and peeing on the street, and watch the Bear in the Big Blue House "Potty Time" DVD on a continuous loop. He was in underpants by 27 months during the day, and by 32 months at night.

So I've got nothing, because I didn't really do much of anything other than go with his interests.

The younger one is more of a challenge, though. His personality is completely different, and he really isn't convinced there are any benefits to being in underpants. Plus I'm at work all day now, so I don't have the same ability to control the situation on a micro level. And it's harder to just leave him in underpants all day and not worry about accidents, since we have to leave the house more to work around his older brother's school schedule.

We've talked here about potty training several times in the past few years, and as usual you guys have been a font of information and experience. I'd like to open up another discussion about it, but pick your brains for ideas about training a non-only child who is at the whim of an older child's schedule, and also for training a child (who isn't so sure about it) when there's a childcare issue involved.

Help?