Mom Guilt

I feel like I'm failing as a mom. Its awful.

My kid hates daycare. He's been there almost a month. At drop offs, he so sad. He stands in the window and waves to me. I blow him kisses and smile and tell him I love him. But then I have to turn my back and walk to my car and it feels like I'm abandoning him. When I pick him up in the afternoon, he is overjoyed to see me but almost cries out of relief.

The teachers say he's doing better. He has at least two little friends. But when I ask the kid about school, he shuts down or tells me the best part is when he gets to go home. He whimpers when we have to leave the house in the morning. He whimpers when we pull into the daycare parking lot.

I just worry for him because he seems miserable all day long. This week, after I put him to bed, he woke up twice in the night crying. I'd go in to calm him and ask what's wrong and he'd say he didn't want to go to school, that he was "just a little bit nervous" about school.

I don't know what to do. Because he is my child, he is nearly as stubborn as I am. For the first week, he refused to eat at daycare, all day. His dad and I started sending him with food from home and he eats a little now but the lunch lady gives me grief every morning, acting as though I don't feed him enough. The mom-guilt is crushing.

I don't know what more to do. In the mornings before I leave him, I give him a big lipstick kiss on his hand, so he'll have a kiss from mom all day. I also put a heart sticker on his shirt, which is his backup kiss for when the lipstick washes off. He has pictures of his dad and me and him in his cubby. I reassure him that mommy or daddy will always come to get him. None of it seems to make much of a difference.