This is horrible! People drastically underestimate how damaging it is for children to be separated from their families, particularly babies under the age of 2–3. It can cause lifelong trauma...
This is horrible!
People drastically underestimate how damaging it is for children to be separated from their families, particularly babies under the age of 2–3. It can cause lifelong trauma symptoms even in children who have no memory of the separation and even when the separation was brief. Taking young children from their families should only ever be done in cases where it will save the child from an even worse fate — but if many cases of shaken baby syndrome are actually misdiagnosed, that means a lot of children have been traumatized completely unnecessarily and will have worse outcomes for the rest of their lives.
I think this is likely quite OK. I suspect that switching frequently between different daycare centers (or nannies, etc.) could potentially be a problem, but seeing the same people day after day...
I think this is likely quite OK. I suspect that switching frequently between different daycare centers (or nannies, etc.) could potentially be a problem, but seeing the same people day after day probably registers as having a large extended family rather than as being separated from family. Adopted children usually do very well in their new homes, so I don't think children are identifying who is and is not a blood relative; they just need the opportunity to form long-term, stable attachments to adults and not have those attachments stretched or severed too much or too often.
Foster care is particularly tough on kids because it is often very unstable. When I was in foster care (for just five months, due to a false/mistaken accusation that took a while to sort of out due to an overloaded family court system), I was moved between three different foster families during that time and never had the opportunity to form an attachment to anyone. Instead of feeling like I had a new family, it just felt like I had no family. I did still have visitations with my parents, but they were infrequent (like once every two weeks) and very short (like 30 minutes), which is so far from sufficient that it's laughable (very, very dark laughter). I am still dealing with the trauma from that period of my life, and I expect I will for the rest of my life.
Before foster care, I attended daycare and I was OK with that. I have absolutely no lasting negative feelings about daycare and regard it as one of my happy childhood memories.
After foster care, I went into my grandparents' custody for a time, and then I moved back in with both my parents. These transitions were not the least bit traumatizing to me because they were between people I felt mutual love and attachment with, and I still saw both groups of people frequently even when I wasn't living with them. I probably could have done this exact transition every six months for the entirety of my childhood and been OK.
For this reason, I also do not fret too much about children of divorced parents. I know that divorce can be very hard on children in it's own way, but it is not a family separation the way that foster care is. The key, I think, is that the child can continue to maintain connections to loving adults; a change in scenery is nothing compared to that.
Just make sure that you impart on her that you will be back to pick her up! My son didn't enter daycare until he was 2.5ish, so he was totally used to seeing me all day every day. Then one day I...
Just make sure that you impart on her that you will be back to pick her up! My son didn't enter daycare until he was 2.5ish, so he was totally used to seeing me all day every day. Then one day I took him somewhere else and left him there. At the end of that day, he barely recognized me when I picked him up. He had spent a whole day thinking that the daycare was his new home. Such a horrible, horrible experience. I don't know how he got that impression, because I'm sure I told him that I'd be back later in the day to pick him up, but who knows what goes through little minds. I assume you won't have this issue, as I think it was a problem of him being an older kid, but it's worth considering! Avoid that horror if at all possible!
P.S. As a 6 year-old in 1st grade now, I don't think that experience affects him at all. But he never did quite enjoy being out of the house until he moved on to preschool.
Kind of offtopic - when I was 4 I was in ballet class, and I vividly remember sitting on the sidewalk outside of class for hours waiting for my mom to come back and pick me up, and slowly...
Kind of offtopic - when I was 4 I was in ballet class, and I vividly remember sitting on the sidewalk outside of class for hours waiting for my mom to come back and pick me up, and slowly accepting that she never would and that I would never see her or my home ever again. It might be my earliest memory.
Apparently she was about 15 minutes late and the ballet teacher was sitting outside with me, but that's not how I remember it. I refused to go back to ballet class after that, but I was fine with spending the day with our neighbor or going to all sorts of other classes.
This is horrible!
People drastically underestimate how damaging it is for children to be separated from their families, particularly babies under the age of 2–3. It can cause lifelong trauma symptoms even in children who have no memory of the separation and even when the separation was brief. Taking young children from their families should only ever be done in cases where it will save the child from an even worse fate — but if many cases of shaken baby syndrome are actually misdiagnosed, that means a lot of children have been traumatized completely unnecessarily and will have worse outcomes for the rest of their lives.
As a new parent about to put his 8 month old in daycare, I truly wonder how that (even) will be traumatizing for her.
People have been trading baby-watching duty for longer than we've been "people", daycare as a concept is fine.
I think this is likely quite OK. I suspect that switching frequently between different daycare centers (or nannies, etc.) could potentially be a problem, but seeing the same people day after day probably registers as having a large extended family rather than as being separated from family. Adopted children usually do very well in their new homes, so I don't think children are identifying who is and is not a blood relative; they just need the opportunity to form long-term, stable attachments to adults and not have those attachments stretched or severed too much or too often.
Foster care is particularly tough on kids because it is often very unstable. When I was in foster care (for just five months, due to a false/mistaken accusation that took a while to sort of out due to an overloaded family court system), I was moved between three different foster families during that time and never had the opportunity to form an attachment to anyone. Instead of feeling like I had a new family, it just felt like I had no family. I did still have visitations with my parents, but they were infrequent (like once every two weeks) and very short (like 30 minutes), which is so far from sufficient that it's laughable (very, very dark laughter). I am still dealing with the trauma from that period of my life, and I expect I will for the rest of my life.
Before foster care, I attended daycare and I was OK with that. I have absolutely no lasting negative feelings about daycare and regard it as one of my happy childhood memories.
After foster care, I went into my grandparents' custody for a time, and then I moved back in with both my parents. These transitions were not the least bit traumatizing to me because they were between people I felt mutual love and attachment with, and I still saw both groups of people frequently even when I wasn't living with them. I probably could have done this exact transition every six months for the entirety of my childhood and been OK.
For this reason, I also do not fret too much about children of divorced parents. I know that divorce can be very hard on children in it's own way, but it is not a family separation the way that foster care is. The key, I think, is that the child can continue to maintain connections to loving adults; a change in scenery is nothing compared to that.
Just make sure that you impart on her that you will be back to pick her up! My son didn't enter daycare until he was 2.5ish, so he was totally used to seeing me all day every day. Then one day I took him somewhere else and left him there. At the end of that day, he barely recognized me when I picked him up. He had spent a whole day thinking that the daycare was his new home. Such a horrible, horrible experience. I don't know how he got that impression, because I'm sure I told him that I'd be back later in the day to pick him up, but who knows what goes through little minds. I assume you won't have this issue, as I think it was a problem of him being an older kid, but it's worth considering! Avoid that horror if at all possible!
P.S. As a 6 year-old in 1st grade now, I don't think that experience affects him at all. But he never did quite enjoy being out of the house until he moved on to preschool.
Kind of offtopic - when I was 4 I was in ballet class, and I vividly remember sitting on the sidewalk outside of class for hours waiting for my mom to come back and pick me up, and slowly accepting that she never would and that I would never see her or my home ever again. It might be my earliest memory.
Apparently she was about 15 minutes late and the ballet teacher was sitting outside with me, but that's not how I remember it. I refused to go back to ballet class after that, but I was fine with spending the day with our neighbor or going to all sorts of other classes.
Good advice!!