What If It's the Best Choice For Me But Not For My Child?

On prioritizing my career goals or my child's education.

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As parents, we are constantly making choices for our kids.

Choices that we believe will keep them safe, choices that we hope will make them happy, choices that we think will help them grow… But for all of the choices we make for our children, we make just as many for ourselves. After all, we’re human beings who deserve to be safe, happy, and growing, too.

But what happens when that choice is really difficult to make? Even worse, what happens when the choice you need to make stands in opposition to your love for your child and your love for yourself? What if the choice you have to make might mean selfishly doing something for yourself despite knowing that your child would likely be better off if you’ve made the other choice? What if the best choice for your child is not the best choice for you?

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling to figure out where to send our son to preschool this coming year.

I say I because my wonderful equal partner of a spouse will support this decision either way. But due to the nature of his job, it falls on me to figure out the afterschool situation for our kid. (I do legitimately have a more flexible job due to working from home—which is not an option for my husband—but it’s pretty fucked up that moms are always expected to be the ones to bend, be more flexible, and figure out aftercare even when they’re the breadwinners of their household—not quite the situation in my house, but still!)

Let me back up for a second.

Since we moved to Colorado in 2021, our child has been attending the same daycare. Now that they’re 4 years old, they will qualify for Colorado’s amazing Universal Pre-K program, which guarantees 15 free hours of preschool education for 4-year-olds. If we switch to an elementary school’s preschool program, this covers half of the cost—but it leaves us wondering what to do with our kiddo from 2:30 to 5 pm while mommy and daddy finish up work.

Meanwhile, he can stay at his daycare, continue on with their preschool program, and essentially get those same 15 free hours discounted from our monthly bill. And with this option, he’d keep going to school 8 am-5:30 pm like he is now.

Considering that there are two working parents in this household, the choice seems simple, right? But hold on…

Option 1: Stick with the Current Daycare for Preschool

Keeping my son in his current daycare is a seamless transition. He’s already in their Preschool 1 class, so this would simply mean moving up to Preschool 2 until he attends a public elementary school next year for Kindergarten. He would get to stay with most of his friends, we would pay less in tuition, and we wouldn’t have to worry about picking him up from school until the workday was over.

Easy peasy, right? Well, not so much. Sure, it’s by far the “easier” choice—but it’s not necessarily the best one for our child.

As a mom who got diagnosed with ADHD just over a year after giving birth, I’ve been keeping an eye out for signs of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in my kid. You see, ADHD is highly heritable and several of my family members have it (with several more undiagnosed but surely have it, too). I think I pretty much just assume that he’s going to have ADHD since 88% odds are hard to beat, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

For a while now, I’ve observed him very closely to see whether the stereotypical toddler behavior of excess energy and impulse issues are developmentally appropriate or, as I put it in my head, a bit extra. That extra being ADHD, of course. Well… to me, it’s always seemed “a bit extra” for him, especially when I compare him to some of his peers.

And as much as I don’t believe that our sex organs determine our gender differences, my kid does have a lot of stereotypical “boy” amount of energy and excitement that I’ve not seen in his AFAB friends (AFAB = assigned female at birth). So while some of his behavior could just be because of his age and sex, I still feel that ADHD is in the mix, too. In fact, when we spoke with his pediatrician about the possibility of Rio being neurodivergent like his parents at his last check-up, the pediatrician said something along the lines of: “He seems like the kind of kid I can look at today and say, yes, I’ll see him for an ADHD diagnosis in two years.” I mean, that’s basically confirmation!

So what does my 4-year-old’s potential ADHD have to do with Preschool Option 1? Well… the daycare is small and definitely doesn’t have the resources to deal with neurodivergent kids. There are some other kids in his class who likely have ADHD, too, but it’s still a small school and there isn’t much they will be able to do. Even more so, there isn’t much that they’d want to do.

Recently, there’s been a huge push at the daycare for kids to sit during circle time (a 10-15-minute period when they gather together around the teacher). Now, I get that kids need to learn how to do this, but lately, the daycare’s language has been a bit “or else,” which I just don’t think is at all realistic for a group of 4-year-olds, ADHD or not.

Overall, Option 1 is an easy one. But after three years, I’m just kind of over the daycare and ready for our kiddo to move on to the next phase of his schooling. Plus, they won’t know what to do about any early ADHD struggles he may have in the next year and I don’t think they will create a very supportive environment.

But it’s not like it’ll be terrible, right? We know the school, the other kids, the other parents, and the community. The school hours work with our work schedules, and the location is pretty near perfect. And we’re still paying less for school overall, so it’s a pretty decent choice.

Option 2: Go to a New Neurodivergent-Friendly School

Before staying at our current daycare for preschool was an option (which we didn’t find out about until March), we were fully prepared to put our child in a local public elementary school’s preschool program. In fact, I spent tons of time researching the different school options, and my husband and I even toured some of the local schools together. Our school choice was set; we applied and got into the school we wanted for Rio.

And the school? Well, I love it. It happens to have a big autism center and praises itself on having a very neurodiverse community.

There were a lot of reasons why I love this school over the daycare, but the fact that they understand how neurodivergent minds work is pretty much the #1 reason why I wanted to send our child here for preschool and probably longer.

My biggest example of why I loved it so much is from when we toured the school. During the visit, the principal told us how they handle circle time (remember, the same thing I don’t like about the current daycare?). Here’s what they do: When it’s time for circle time, they still teach all the kids to sit together… but some of them have accommodations like a fidget toy or sitting in a special chair. Their teachers are well-trained in helping the kids who struggle to sit still. And it just looked so nice!

The thing that I especially loved about this situation is that, unlike at other schools we toured, the teachers work with the child to determine what’s best for them. They don’t just take the “problem” child aside and let them do something else while the rest of the kids are doing circle time. This seems like a good option, right? But it also excludes a child who’s struggling a little bit and might do a whole lot better if they just had something to squeeze in their hands at the same time as they sit. Personally, I much prefer this model of providing accommodations to the child so that they can still accomplish the task and grow with their classmates, but in a way that works for them and their brain and doesn’t exclude them.

By far, this is the better choice for our child—at least as far as we can tell right now—which is purely based on the environment we saw when we toured the school. And, well, the general “we support our neurodiverse community” mindset that’s all over the school’s website. Maybe it’s all pandering, but it’s certainly the only school that’s even mentioned neurodiversity, so that’s a win in my book.

The problem? Well… it’s a public elementary school, which means that our child will only be in school from 8 am-2:30 pm, but mommy works till 4 pm and daddy works until 5 pm. So what to do?

Originally, I had the idea of doing a Spanish class-type thing where every afternoon, we would have Spanish lessons, talk only in Spanish, read books, maybe watch Spanish-language TV, etc. I grew up speaking Spanish, and I would love it if that was true for my son, too, but it’s really difficult for me to have a bilingual household—something that I detailed previously in this essay for Parents magazine.

But I recently received good news at my job and went from a part-time contractor role to starting full time last week! I’m super excited about this development, but it does leave me in a tough place when it comes to after-school care.

Unfortunately, there are no aftercare options at the school itself, which is largely due to the funding and laws regulating preschool classrooms and elementary school classrooms. Basically, there’s aftercare for Kindergarten and older kids… but not preschool.

So if we choose this school, then we have to figure out aftercare on our own. And I’ll be honest: That’s a whole lot of mental and emotional labor that I do not want to do. The cheapest option is to have him home with me, but what is he doing from 2:30-4 pm while I am still working? He still requires a lot of interaction, so I’m afraid it’ll end up with him just watching the iPad every afternoon while I finish work. We’re pretty loose on TV around here, but still…

And then there’s the thing complicating this even further: My career.

My Career Growth is Making This Choice *SO* Difficult

I’ve been mulling over this decision for the past several months. I’m also talking about it in therapy, and my therapist has pointed out several times now that there is a clear choice regarding how I feel about the two different schools.

I mean, for sure, the neurodiverse school is the best choice for my child and the choice that I much, much prefer. I want him to be in a supportive environment because I want him cared for and for his neurodivergent brain not to be stamped down the way mine was as a kid. Don’t we always want better for our kids? If aftercare wasn’t an issue, then I wouldn’t even be writing this. That public school ALL THE WAY!

But aftercare IS a problem… and so is the way my career is growing in the next year.

Other than finally having a full-time job again after getting laid off in January 2023 and struggling with depression for much of last year, I was also given the opportunity to work on something really fucking exciting and special that I can’t talk about just yet.

Like, this would mean accomplishing a LIFELONG GOAL. That’s huge! For my career, sure, but also for me personally.

This new project is finally ramping up this month and will take about 10 hours a week of my non-job time from now until the end of 2024… meaning it will cut into all of my other time. And I’ll be honest: It’s been really difficult to make progress on this project in the past couple of months due to various forms of overwhelm and just being super busy.

As summer continues into fall, I’m going to be increasingly needing to make sure I am devoting as much time as I can to this project. Obviously, kiddo and husband will be having their own fun when I’m writing at night or on the weekends, but I don’t want that to take up so much of my time that I’m ignoring my family.

So when I count the hours I need to devote to this project by the end of the year and the 12.5 hours a week of afternoon childcare that we need, I just don’t know how to figure it out. It’s just so much to handle, between my actual job, family life, socializing, home shit…. and then adding the mental and physical load of figuring out wtf to do about after-school care, then doing it every single day, and managing it all. Or even deciding to do Spanish lessons at home or just let my 4-year-old watch TV while I finish work.

No matter what, putting him in the school I want is going to make my life even harder to manage. I actually need more time for myself right now. I mean, how else will I successfully complete this big lifetime achievement project that I am wholly devoted to?

So How Do You Make a Choice: For You or For Kiddo?

I’ve been struggling with this choice for months, and I still don’t know what to do.

A couple of weeks, I woke up feeling absolutely sure that keeping our child in his current daycare and therefore going with their preschool program was the best choice for our family. I mean, there’s nothing truly wrong with the school and I’m usually all about not adding to my already quite full mental load.

And it’s just one more year, right? I mean… how much damage can a bad school experience do to my 4-year-old when he is unlikely to even remember most of the next year of life?

But my heart still aches for my baby, who I just want to protect and put in the best possible environment—and for my childhood self, who didn’t have anyone to care for me in this way.

So then, I went back and decided that we wanted to put him in the elementary school’s preschool program after all. It’ll be better for him to be in an environment that is understanding and supportive of his differently-wired brain—something that I will fiercely advocate for in the future, too.

But that means putting myself in a situation that will absolutely mean more stress and less self-care, which is a recipe for overwhelm, worsened anxiety, and maybe even the return of my depression.

From what I know right now, my choices are this:

• Option 1: Keep my child in their current mostly fine daycare for their preschool program, which will be better for me since I am working on a project due by the end of 2024 that will mean a major career accomplishment and fulfilling a lifelong dream. But could be worse for them since the school isn’t likely to be able to provide any accommodations or support for his (undiagnosed) ADHD.

• Option 2: Put my child in a neurodivergent-friendly school, which will be better for them since they will be in a safer and more understanding environment, which I desperately want for them. But this will absolutely increase my mental load and physical labor for my family during a time when I need more time to focus on this big career project, which can have bigger mental health repercussions.

I’m absolutely not a “we must sacrifice ourselves for our children” kind of mom. It’s cool if you are, but I am very aware that I have my own needs and that those needs have to be prioritized, too. They especially need to be prioritized if I want to continue being the kind of mom I want to be. (Goal #1: Stay sober!)

And yet… the fierce mama bear inside of me just hates the idea of my son being in a school environment that won’t be able to fully support his growing needs.

So, how does one decide? I honestly don’t know, which I guess is why I’ve finally emerged from my accidental newsletter hiatus and written 2,947 words on the topic. Verbal processing like this usually helps me, but my head is still a jumble of indecision.

For now, I’m just trying to remind myself that I am not the only parent who has been faced with the choice of either acting selfishly or sacrificing their true selves. And we all survive it, right?

Have you ever been faced with a difficult choice in your parenting versus personal life? If you have school-aged kids, how do you manage the afterschool care issue? I’d love to hear from all of you!

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Abrazos,

Your friendly neighborhood bisexual Latina mom with ADHD raising a Gen Alpha kid