A mom and dad were hoping to capture an adorable moment on camera as their son emerged from his first day at day care, but what they ended up filming was something altogether different.
For millions of children in the U.S., full-time day care is a reality of life. In 2019, 64.7 percent of young children were enrolled in full-time kindergarten or nursery, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed.
The figure was double the number recorded 40 years ago, highlighting a shift in the way many families have sought to balance working and raising children. Kahlia Moussa, a mom of two in Sydney, had little choice but to enroll her kids in day care.
"In our current economy parents literally are having to return back to work, and our children are in care to simply survive," she said. "We are a single-parent-income house as my husband is a burn survivor, so it isn't as easy as 'I stayed home with my child because my husband worked hard for us, too.'"
Like many families, the Moussas find a way to make it all work. That doesn't mean there isn't the occasional hiccup along the way, like the one they experienced on their first day picking up their son, Ariah, from day care.
An avid TikToker, who regularly posts about her family's exploits under the handle @the_moussas, Moussa decided to film a video of the moment, which occurred during the pandemic.
In the clip, Ariah can be seen through a glass door approaching his waiting parents. He seems fine at first, but the moment he locks eyes with mom and dad everything changes. He starts crying, evidently feeling emotional at seeing his parents again.
The reaction caught his parents off guard. "We had no understanding of object permanence or anything at that point, so honestly, we were kind of stunned at first," Moussa said. "He just cuddled us and immediately stopped crying once we picked him up."
Moussa said she and her husband had made efforts to try to prepare Ariah for the change but felt he was "too young to understand."
"We had been mentioning it to him for weeks despite him not understanding, and that's something we have continued with anything we do," Moussa told Newsweek.
Though he might not have grasped what was going on, all the signs were there to suggest it would be a smooth transition from home to his new day care setting.
"He had done two weeks' worth of visits with me at the day care with him just getting to know the environment and getting used to everyone around him," Moussa said.
When they dropped Ariah off that first morning, everything went to plan. "He literally walked off without a goodbye," Moussa said. "When I contacted the school that day at least three times, there had been no tears or anything, so we were actually expecting a really happy pickup."
Moussa said she still had mixed emotions whenever she watched the video from that day. "It makes me sad, but I also have to laugh at how dramatic his cry was," she said. "We recorded it expecting a really sweet moment of him running to the door excited to see us because of the drop-off."
She was pleased to report that despite the initial shock, Ariah, now 4 years old, loves his day care. Moussa also stressed that the clip was filmed while COVID-19 restrictions were still in place, which is why they were unable to rush to his side. "That was the first and only day he cried. He's actually never cried at drop-off or pickup again since that day," she said. "Sometimes we have to chase him to leave now."
English (US) ·