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I thought — mistakenly, as it turned out — that it was pretty momentous to be witnessing Lily’s first props-assisted rollover yesterday.

We were about midway through our hour-long drop-off at daycare.  I was pretending not to notice the time I was supposed to be using for myself slipping away as I clung to my girl.  After all, I couldn’t be expected to just put her down while the infant caregiver was busy feeding one of Lily’s classmates.  And when Veronica set up a play mat to allow me to do just that, well, in my experience Lily doesn’t like play mats, so I was really doing everyone a favor by hanging out to rescue her when she complained about being stuck like a helpless little turtle on her back, unable to look away from the looming forms of stuffed horses and pigs with black and white checks on their bellies hanging overhead.

This particular play mat, however, had one thing our rejected-by-both-babies one at home does not:  a small, crescent-shaped pillow sewn into it.  Designed, I knew, even though Jake was never much of a tummy time guy, for helping infants appreciate tummy time by giving them a little lift.  Imagine, if you will, lying sprawled face down in a sea of whimsical shapes you neither recognize nor find particularly attractive while trying to lift a head that feels as if it is saddled with a thick, granite helmet.  You get a lift or two for a second or two and then crash nose-first back into the whimsy.

Now consider the benefits of a little crescent pillow that supports your chest and creates a gentle slope of your spine, allowing far easier head support.  Not that it doesn’t crash to the ground frequently, but at least you have time to appreciate the view before it does.

Quickly surmising that Lily was horrified by the animals Veronica helpfully hunted down and I obediently attached to the overhead arches of the play mat — something about her crying at the sight of them — I decided we should try out that pillow thing.  In the past week Lily’s been giving the lying on her tummy and lifting her chest and head routine a try, so I figured she’d be happy for a little prop to help her along.

She expressed a moment of initial surprise as Veronica and I arranged her.

“What do you think?” I chirped in a voice meant to suggest she should think this was just the best darned thing in the world.

She responded by rolling onto her back.

This was not the first time Lily has tried to roll over.  She’s tried more than a few times.  But has always been stymied by the bottom arm getting in the way, a common baby complaint.

This time, however, the pillow provided just enough clearance for her arm to magically move right through and — ta da! — she was on her back, crashed into one of the arches of the play mat and not particularly happy about it.

Still, it was an auspicious moment to recount to Mike half an hour later when I had rocked her to sleep so I could finally put her down and leave.

My big, euphoric bubble deflated more than a little bit, however, when I arrived to pick her up.  Lily, I was informed, had rolled over on flat ground that afternoon, a far more monumental achievement than doing so with props.  And, of course, she achieved this milestone when I wasn’t around to witness it.

It’s a Benefit of Daycare.  But Is It?

There are a lot of firsts many parents are happy to leave to the caregivers at daycare.  First time going in the potty. (It’s known as “potty training,” and more than a few friends with children in daycare have expressed great relief that they didn’t have to tackle this particular challenge of parenting themselves.)  First time making messy art projects with fingerpaints and glue.  First time being bitten by another child.

But there’s a definite down side to having your child learn from her peers and from the stimulation of a new environment.  That definite down side quite obviously being that she does important stuff when you’re not around.

I’ve more or less grown to accept this fact with equanimity.  When Mike moaned that Jake can suddenly pedal a tricycle when he hadn’t a clue how under our watch, I shrugged my shoulders and pointed out that his friends could teach him better than I could.

How far I’ve come from my shocked discovery that he was conning me into holding his bottle for him at ten months of age when he apparently happily held it himself at school.

In fact, I can’t say for certain that Mike or I managed to see Jake’s first steps, to hear him sing his first song, color with crayons for the first time, or throw his first ball.  It’s likely he did all these things at daycare.

It’s a Community Thing

Maybe I should feel sad about missing these firsts.  But mostly I feel kind of lazy.  Like a dropout from the overachiever culture in which we live.  Why, I figure, push my child to, say, read at the age of three when I can let him figure it out when his friends are doing it?  To this end, my main potty training strategy has been to say every night, “Who got a sticker for peeing in the potty at school today?  Don’t you want a sticker like him?”

Peer pressure, it turns out, goes only so far if a boy doesn’t have any interest in peeing in the potty.

But, really, as I think about it, parents aren’t supposed to be there for every first.  We’re not even necessarily meant to be the ones teaching our kids how to do everything.

It surely seems like we should, in a world where parents yell at four-year-olds on the Little League field and go through Spanish flashcards with their three-year-olds and even have online access to their high schoolers’ classroom records so they can monitor every assignment turned in, every grade received.  Who’s going to push our little darlings if we don’t?

But I think it’s more than this hyper-goal-bound society in which we live.  Much of what parenting has taken on, I suspect, comes from the loss of community.

Mike and I talked about this a lot when I decided that Lily ought to start daycare at the tender age of three months.  And the more moms who’ve told me that they’re not one of the ones who enjoys staying home all day alone with an infant, the more I begin to suspect that it is the very rare parent indeed who can do so without suffering a large dose of depression.

Once upon a time, when you think about it (and still in other parts of the world), people lived in community groups.  Extended families cared for children, not just a single parent with a graduate degree locked up inside a beautiful home with a big backyard and empty sidewalks in front.  Caregiving parents had the company of other caregiving parents.  And, more importantly, built-in caregivers to help with the endless tasks of holding the baby, keeping the baby occupied, rocking the baby to sleep.  All of these things, I’ve discovered this week, are infinitely more satisfying when you can hand them off to someone else from time to time.

By the same token, kids learn from a community.  They do what their peers are doing.  No one had to sit down and explain to Jake that he is supposed to wash his hands before meals at school.  The other kids did it, so he did. No questions asked.  Unless, of course, we are at home and there are no other kids washing their hands before dinner.  In which case, he doesn’t really see the point.

Which is the point.  An adult taking on the hand-washing training of her toddler might feel compelled to explain what “bye, bye germs!” really means.  After all, one has to find some way to give context to the puzzling habits that are really just products of our culture (even if very useful ones).  But a kid with a bunch of other kids just does what they’re doing because — they’re doing it.  It’s like the difference between learning to talk by being around talking people and studying a language in high school.  Jake doesn’t much care if, “I go to Eric’s house,” is an imperative, a declarative statement, or merely wishful thinking.  He just says it.

So, really, all I’m saying is that daycare can be a kind of substitute for community child rearing.  And, seen in that context, there’s no reason to feel guilty or sad or angry that we sometimes miss our children’s firsts.  We get to see the seconds or the thirds or the tenths, and each of them is just as important, our obsessive need to catalog the first times notwithstanding.

It’s a comforting way for me to make it through these first weeks of leaving Lily in daycare every afternoon.  As I fight stomach aches brought on by the thought of her growing up with someone else next to her and sweat as I try to keep myself from running back to pick her up, the work on my desk waiting to be done be damned, I can remind myself that this is, really, the most natural way in the world to raise my child.  In a community we’re very, very lucky to have.

Take a Yoga Class for the Community Spirit

Community is, not surprisingly, a big part of yoga.  What is community, after all, but an acknowledgement of our connection to the people around us?

This is why we so often practice yoga in a class.  There is undeniably a different spirit that infuses a room full of practitioners.  We feel the energy given off by the person on the next mat, and it helps us through the difficult poses.  Better still, we get to laugh together, fall over together, and encourage each other.  Even a mysore practice, in which one moves at one’s own pace, is fuller when practiced in a room with others.

So if you can, go to a yoga class this week.  Experience the community.  Let it remind you that sometimes life — and child rearing — can get a bit easier if you let others help you with it.