After School Care Guilt

There comes a moment in every parent's life when you realise you can't actually be in two places at once. You can't be at your 3:30pm work meeting and at the school gate to pick them up and make chit chat with the other parents.  Enter: After School Care. The modern-day village it takes to raise a child… and also pay your bills.

But oh, the guilt.

It starts innocently. A friend casually mentions that they walk home a different way every day and talk about the day. Meanwhile in the winter months you forget what your child looks like in daylight and occasional have to be reminded what year they are in. Then you realise all the other parents are taking their kids to art classes and chess club after school, as opposed to picking them up in the dark, straight from work, pretending to ignore the pings of emails as you drag them through Coles to get something for dinner.

Suddenly you’re faced with questions like:

Am I neglecting my child’s development?

Should I enrol them in Mandarin and miniature fencing?

Is after care just some awful post school prison where your children look out at the kids with good (and presumably non-working) parents, playing harmonicas and marking off the hours in pavement chalk?

Fear not. The truth is, after school care is no longer just a babysitting gig where the carers only responsibility was to minimise tears and blood shed until your arrival. Today they are designed ensure your child is stimulated, socialised, nurtured, challenged. So, you can rest easy that your little one isn’t just languishing in a dark room banging their tin cup against the bars.

Ironically, you are probably working in part to cover the aftercare fees, it doesn’t come cheap, which can add to the guilt. Even if you can work out the complex calculations involving rebates, tax offsets, it is pricey. And yet… you still sign up, because otherwise you're sprinting out of meetings at 3pm leaping over chairs and running through the carpark like a mad person.

There is also just the straight-out child guilt which can change on the daily. Some days they love after-school care. The snacks, friends, games, and not being bossed around by you for an hour or two and they don’t want to leave. Other days you can be met with teary monologues about how - "You left me there ALL DAY," even though school finished 40 minutes ago and they were playing Connect 4 with their best mate.

It is all par for the course, and if you were (or are) in a position to pick up you little love on the bell every day, I am sure you have a whole other set of parent guilts. So embrace after school care for what it is. A necessity for many, a lifeline for most, and often (despite the guilt) a whole lot of fun for kids. They get social interaction, a safe space, and sometimes even a better craft cupboard than you could ever offer at home.