This week my son had the most important unofficial graduation of his life. He “graduated” from daycare. You might remember our hesitation about placing our son in daycare months ago. Despite our overall positive experience with the daycare itself and the daycare providers we are certainly overjoyed to have finally reached the summer months and reconnect with our sons weekday activities in the comforts of home.
While my wife was in a meeting this past week I took our nearly-out-of-daycare son to a nearby park and places his little body on the teeter-totter. He instinctively grabbed onto the little bars in front of him. I held him around his waist with one arm and used the other to push on the opposite side of the teeter-totter to raise him up. In the hot summer sun the shadows under his raised cheeks became dark when his eyes opened wide and his face produced a large smile. I couldn’t have been happier.
It was a weird feeling. While I was completely excited about his happiness I was concurrently concerned about his safety. I couldn’t let him go for fear of him falling. Even when I was holding him I still had the fear of him falling. Slowly and methodically I raised and lowered my son on this first teeter-totter ride. He just kept looking at me and smiling. He laughed at the peaks and concentrated on not falling backwards during the valleys.
I realized that I was teaching him in this moment. When his eyes looked to mine he was asking a question: what am I supposed to think? While I normally encourage independent thinking in my college courses this was different somehow. When I smiled and told him it was okay and shared the excitement in my eyes with him he was learning one way to think of this experience. Right now… teeter-totter is fun times with Dad. Hopefully my wife and I will have lots of fun times with our son this summer.