Let's face it, when I left school, I had my opinions and techniques firmly anchored in my little brain regarding my new specialty: early childhood. In my early twenties, no children and a good position in a newly built daycare, I had ideas full in my head. Time passed and I often found myself judging certain parents who told me that they gave their almost 2-year-old child a drink in the middle of the night, who never let their child cry, who let their little one arrive at daycare in pajamas with rain boots and bunny ears on his head, because the little prince didn't want to get dressed this morning. I said to myself deep down, but why don't they do this, why don't they do that while managing the little brats I had with me all day.
But one day I ended up becoming a mom myself. And that's when I understood. I understood that at some point you just want to buy 2 hours of sleep with any technique possible. That your 2-year-old's bacon tantrum is blowing up because he doesn't want to put on his damn shoes, well, it makes you 45 minutes late so you leave his damn rain boots there! Not to mention that the coffee is gone, the first thing you buy at the grocery store!
Being an educational mom also means leaving your child with one of your colleagues. Often, it's someone whose strengths and weaknesses you know, so you often suspect what your little one's year will be like with her. But what you don't realize at first is that you are unfortunately not a parent like the others. When your child gets bitten or scratched by another child (whose identity you suspect 3/4 of the time, because you already know them far too well) you can't really say anything, because you know that your said colleague manages a group of 9-10 toddlers absolutely all by herself like a big girl and sometimes you feel sorry for her to see her running around like a headless chicken while you try to be a coooool mom and hold back your little pang of emotion, because your little baby has damaged skin. There also comes the day when you accumulate little hitches in your packsac like, dirty bottoms, lost objects, stories about your friend's clothes that go around the group when you paid a fortune for it and she can't read the labels that you duly initialed. There is also the reality, of the fact that you have friends who work there too, and that even if you are not present on the floor (like in maternity for a second) you end up knowing things that you are not supposed to know and that bother you, but which you cannot talk about, because your friends colleagues will be told. It is practically impossible for a parent educator to go and complain to the management like a normal parent, because when you do that, it seems so bad and you do not want to go and bitch at your colleague so that she is reproached for things because of you. You know very well that if you do that, it will be known that it comes from you and then "Hello, great work environment!!". Finally, you tell yourself that you know very well that your colleague treats your child as if it were her own despite all the little faults and that she takes care of it like the apple of her eye and that's all that matters.
Basically, becoming a mom has honestly made me a better educator. I admit I was naive to think I knew what was best for other people's children. I realized that sometimes we let go of Dr. Nadia's techniques, that we don't care about what books say. We just do our best, with the resources that are available to us, in the present moment. So sleep with your little ones or not, breastfeed them until they are 4 or not at all, dress them up to the nines or in a Halloween costume... the important thing is to love yourself wholeheartedly!
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