PicoBlog

Parent of a 1st grader and a toddler.

1st grader’s school is private and goes PK4-8th grade, but has a high number of Louisiana tuition voucher students (low-income kids who would otherwise be enrolled in a failing public school). Has uniforms and 6 optional “color days” per year: 2 Saints colors (wear black and/or gold or a Saints jersey), 1 Halloween colors (black, orange, lime green, purple), 1 Christmas colors (red, green, and white), 1 Mardi Gras colors (purple, green, and gold), and 1 either Valentine’s (red, pink, purple and white) OR St Patrick’s colors (green and white), whichever one falls further on the calendar from Mardi Gras that year. This seems reasonably nonspecific, stuff that they would likely have in their closets already, and a lot of it can be re-used from one Spirit Day to another. And there are enough of them to make being out-of-uniform special without it being overwhelming. About 2/3 of the kids participate.

My younger daughter’s DAYCARE OTOH (it goes from 10 weeks to 3-4 year olds, she is 20 months old) and which has no uniforms has had Halloween Pajama Day (because every kid totally has special pajamas for every holiday and is not wearing her sister’s hand-me-downs), a whole week of Christmas dress up days, a whole week of themed dress-up days for National School Choice week, a Valentine’s party and dress-up day, and for Mardi Gras I was told to send in a plain white t-shirt for them to decorate (which I did, and then never saw or heard anything about again) and then told to dress her in a Mardi Gras outfit (we’re in New Orleans, so this isn’t TOTALLY random, but I’m not buying my kid a Mardi Gras outfit that will only fit for one year and then have it get ruined at daycare) for the Friday before Mardi Gras. And every Friday during football season is "Black and Gold Friday" because we must have pictures of all the babies in their tiny Saints onesies! (Note: even though my husband grew up in the suburbs here and literally works next to the Superdome, he doesn't follow football or any sports at all and upon seeing a traffic jam heading downtown will ask me if the Saints are playing that day when it's, like, April. So unless I got it as a hand-me-down, my baby isn't likely to own a Saints onesie.)

Next week there’s a whole week of Dr. Seuss-themed dress up days. There will undoubtedly be dress up days if not whole weeks for St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.

THIS IS A DAYCARE. It exists because mothers are AT WORK. There is absolutely no educational benefit for this at this age. It is ENTIRELY for the benefit of the school’s social media presence.

I’m just flat-out ignoring these dress-up days for the younger kid and getting dirty looks from some of the teachers for sending my kid in in a Santa Claus shirt on Valentines Day, but a large portion of the parents aren’t. (Most of the parents are upper-middle-class white folks.)

I’d argue that these days are NOT harmless, as there are undoubtedly mothers there with PPD or PPA beating themselves up over their “failures” to provide this or that socially-pressured thing for their kids that doesn’t actually matter. This is just one more thing added onto them.

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