Call me a bad mom, but I’m done with constant updates from my child’s daycare

As I was having coffee with a mom friend, I witnessed her pick up her phone with a sigh: “That’s my daughter’s second poo today, and it’s only 10 a.m.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked, like the provincial idiot that I apparently am. “How do you know how many poos she’s done?”

What she showed me next frankly blew my mind: a daycare app so detailed that it would put most patient medical charts in a hospital to shame. 

‘Feedback on their kids in real time’

In real-time, my friend was receiving updates on absolutely everything her child did, including (but not limited to!) what they ate, how much they ate, when they went to the toilet, when they fell asleep, when they woke back up against and who they were playing with. 

She was also being sent contemporaneous photos which she could scour for the slightest change in expression, outfit, or activity (“Oh,” she commented, as we were walking out of the cafe, “they’ve changed her pants!”)

I have two kids in daycare, and I have never seen anything like it.

From our daycare, I receive a weekly wrap-up, which sometimes – but not always – gets posted in the same week that the events it depicts occurred.

I can’t deny that it’s beneficial to have an insight into what my kids are learning (not least so I have some context when my three-year-old son becomes suddenly OBSESSED with worms) and that it’s cute to see pictures of them playing with their friends.

But that’s about where my engagement with the daycare updates stops. 

‘I have absolutely no interest’

If I’m honest, I don’t even look at them all. 

I only recently realized that this isn’t the norm.

Call me a bad parent, but I have absolutely no interest in knowing what is going on with my child while they’re at daycare. 

I trust our daycare educators implicitly.

I don’t care what my kids are wearing, eating, or doing, or who they’re doing it with: I know they’re in the hands of capable, smart, and kind people. 

I’m actually relieved not to know because the days my boys are in daycare are the only days when I can switch my mind off from the background chatter around toilet training, wet nappies and wake windows. 

Barring an accident, an illness, or an unusually unhappy kid, I think there is a time and a place for receiving information about your child’s day at daycare.

The time is “at pickup,” and the place is “inside the center.” 

Just take a step back

A simple whiteboard noting sleep and wake times is generally sufficient, and an actual – gasp! – conversation with an educator can fill you in on anything else you need to know. 

I can’t help but think, too, that every moment an educator has an iPad in their hand for the benefit of a parent – whether that’s to take photos or send updates to an app – is a moment that they don’t have a hand free for a child. 

To be clear, I’m not at all criticizing the childcare workers here – I think they are some of the most amazing, hardworking, and compassionate people I’ve ever met.

I know the drive to give this level of detail is coming from parents, and I think that’s where the root of the problem lies. 

I hear a lot from teacher friends about how hard they find managing parent expectations for kindergarteners, and that makes a lot of sense: it’s no wonder parents have issues transitioning their kids to primary school when they’re used to being fed the literal minutiae of their kids’ days into the palms of their hands.  

The way I see it, it would benefit everyone if we could just take a step back from the daycare apps, and remind ourselves that our kids are in good hands – regardless of how much information we get about them during the day. 

As far as I’m concerned unless they have gastro, it’s absolutely none of my business how many times my kids poo when I’m not with them.

And I’d like to keep it that way.