D R A M A++Q U E E N

Did your best friend steal your boyfriend? Send your tale to Drama Queen for a Day

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T A B L E++T A L K

Are you in love with your child's toy? Parents discuss why it's impossible to grow out of toys in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Losing it
By Lori Liebowich
No lover but the first will ever know me as both a child and a woman
(02/13/98)

A Few Good Men
By Dawn MacKeen
Banking on poor women
(02/12/98)

Time for 1 Thing
By Beth Wolfensberger Singer
The jigsaw puzzle as marital aid
(02/11/98)

Why I miss those loathsome "Barney" kids
By Carol Snow
Unlike our own children, we could turn them off when they got really obnoxious
(02/10/98)

Chewing fat with the girls
By Elizabeth Rapoport
The Duchess of Pork and the Dershowitz of Dieting serve up this season's most fascinating diet books
(02/09/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

addicted to day care_____

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IF IT TAKES A VILLAGE

AND YOU DON'T HAVE ONE,

A GOOD CHILD-CARE

PROVIDER MAY BE

JUST WHAT YOU NEED.

BY PHAEDRA HISE | I'm in love with my day-care center. Yeah, I know that's pretty drastic but before you tell me I'm some kind of unnatural mother, hear me out. Lily's been going there ever since she was 4 months old, over two years now. She began going because my husband earns too much money to quit and stay home, and I like my job too much to quit and stay home. So the whole thing did start so that we could both work. But what I've slowly realized during these past two and a half years is that I need that day-care center for much more than keeping Lily safe and entertained three days a week. I need it to help me raise her. The men and women working there are her playmates, extended family, informal pediatricians and child psychologists.

We live alone. What I mean is that my mini-family is stuck up here in Boston, far from in-laws in the Midwest and generations of my family in the Southeast. Sure, we have friends, but no doting grandparents ready to offer advice or dandle the baby while Bill and I share some rare and valuable face time. When Lily started at the center, that all changed. Suddenly we had not only baby-sitting but a coterie of experienced advisors.

I was relieved, because shortly after Lily was born I realized that my friends with children were completely clueless about newborns. They had already forgotten the minutiae of pablum textures, latch-on, growth spurts and poop colors. As their kids grow older, parents apparently brain-dump all previous information on, say, early walking, to make room for the new stuff on Hanson and Tamagotchi.

My mother's group was a better resource because the kids were all born in the same month. But there were only six of us, so the information pool was pretty limited. At the day-care center, however, were Anne and Lucy -- professionals who had cared for hundreds of children. For me, their information pool was an ocean.

For example, when I started struggling with solid foods, Anne suggested mixing the tasteless cereal with juice when I ran out of expressed milk. When Lily stopped lying quietly for a new diaper, Anne showed me how to do a diaper change while a wriggly toddler is standing up. From watching the young toddler room, I learned that any transition goes more smoothly if you make up a goofy song to move things along, like, "It's time for that/coat and hat/bundle up/to go for a walk! Yay!"

N E X T+P A G E: Better advice than the doctor gives

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