We have been very lucky when its come to Finn's childcare. First thanks to Rene we found Barbara, who took care of him during the first year when infant care was hard to find and COVID made traditional daycares hard to navigate. Eventually though she needed to have surgery so we had to enroll him in a real daycare, and mostly because of its proximity to the house we picked a place called Creative World.
The facilities were great with lots of playspace, they had an emphasis on stem learning, and they had a cool app where every day his teachers would upload pictures and comments like what he ate that day. The classrooms where sometimes in flux with new teachers constantly, and at one point there was an almost complete reboot, but at no point did I ever feel like he was going to a place he wouldn't be taken care of. Monday through Friday during the day Finn was ok, and that was huge for me and Lindsey.
During his time there he grew from being a little toddler that could barely walk to being a big boy, and he made friends and often came home with fun stories of his day. They were always easy to deal with, and the fact that they provided two of his three meals a day made the hardest struggle for me and Lindsey (feeding him healthy food) get erased. I went from checking the pictures daily to just noticing that the notifications came up and that Finn was ok. I figured I could always look later.
I did my best to make sure the people there felt appreciated, and I always splashed out big time for teacher appreciation day each year making sure not just his main teacher but every one he interacted with got something. I spent over $500 total each time (one year it was closer to $1k including crypto I gave them) because they did so much to take care of Finn.
But eventually it was obvious the other kids were leaving him behind. They were potty trained and he resisted. They would go along with activities and he would fight it. Eventually his teacher told me when I picked him up that she had trouble handling him AND all the other kids. That is when I knew he needed something more and I worked to get him into ABA.
Once that was worked out we had a few weeks where we knew Finn was leaving but he hadn't left yet. In that time I made sure to thank everyone who interacted with him, and on the last day they even threw him a going away party. The last night before his last day I got very upset, and tried to go into the app and download every decent picture of him they posted I never saw when I first had the chance. The app fought me some and restricted how far I could go back, but what I saw was a montage of a happy child being social, being loved in a critical time in his life. I knew then that Creative World was a significant part of who he will be. I saved all the memories I could, and I am glad because they very next day we were locked out.
Finn for his part did well with the transition, better than me maybe. He was excited about a new school with new friends, and was preoccupied with getting us to buy as many new lunchboxes (something he didn't need at Creative World) that he could get. His best friend at Creative World acted out the last week and hit him we assume because he was upset Finn was leaving. But Finn was ready to move on, just to get into something new.
Nowadays every time we drive by the place we all wave and Finn says "hi old school!" He talks some about wanting to go back, but for the most part he is happy where he is now getting extra attention. Lindsey and myself talk about how we miss Creative World for how much it did for him and for how nice it was. Maybe he will go back one day for summers or for some other reason, but for now it is a really good memory.
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