Diana Holquist writer. mother. cat lover. (not necessarily in that order)

When we unexpectedly moved to California, I had to find my three-year-old daughter Hana childcare quick. So I did all the right things: I researched, called government agencies, got lots of recommendations. Then, after about 272 phone calls, my daughter was on 272 waitlists. Obviously, we were in trouble.

“Oh, we signed Ashley up just as soon as we knew we were pregnant!” I heard similar refrains again and again. How did parents know to do this? How would parents know that a school is right for a child who they haven’t even met yet? A child who doesn’t yet have specific needs and desires all his own? A child who hasn’t yet formed toes?

It all got me to thinking: is it possible that mommy and daddy don't always know best?

Anyway, for us these were idle questions. I had no choice; all the classes were full.

Well, not all the classes.

When I called the lizard school and they told me they had a space, I almost hung up. A space? The place was obviously littered with crack vials and jagged glass. But I was desperate, so I visited the classroom anyway.

Instantly, I understood.

There he was, Iggy the Iguana: head bobbing, eyes beady, muscular tail swishing back and forth across the bare floor with a muted whoosh (a sound that still gives me the heebie-jeebies to this day). I wanted to grab Hana and run. But she was entranced. Peter, the head teacher, talked to her a long time about scales and claws and other such monstrosities. She listened intently as she stared at this magical man.

She knew then what it took me an entire year to figure out: she had found the perfect nursery school.

Now, if I had had a choice, I would have marched her to a Montessori school where she would have learned to wipe the tables and to feed a proper, respectable bunny. Or sent her to a Waldorf classroom, where she would have eaten organic millet and occupied herself with beautifully-crafted, wooden playthings. But since I had no choice, I just let go and let her decide. This place was safe (apparently, healthy lizards are as safe as bunnies). It was clean (in a non-traditional, non-tidy kind of way). And, as the teacher himself would surely have said, it had a good vibe.

For better or for worse, we were in.

Of course, now that a decision was made, the forms signed, the check written, I was wracked with doubt. This school had two, three, four and five year olds. Was that too much for my little princess? This school had no “academic” learning whatsoever. Would my daughter fall woefully behind? The head teacher was a man! (A man!) Anxiety filled my early A.M. hours as I stared at the ceiling and tossed in my bed.

Meanwhile, here’s what my daughter was thinking: Wow! They have a sandbox! I love sandboxes. I’m going to play in the sandbox all day. I won’t ever go home. Sand! Sand! Sand! Sand!

How do I know that? Because that’s exactly what she did for her first two weeks at school. School is perhaps a pretty loose term for what this place was--the kids chose their own activities and only had to break for snack and lunch--and so she blissfully built castles and dug holes and filled buckets. In my worry about petty, niggling details, I had lost the big picture: Was Hana happy there? Yes. The school had a sandbox.

All was well.

In fact, it was more than well. It was impossibly wonderful. Peter, the head teacher, was a national treasure. Sure, I still had to brace myself for the inevitable mess the classroom was reduced to every day. And I was a little troubled by the fact that my daughter’s relationship with her shoes became a purely abstract one, as she was never actually required to wear any. Eventually, we just stopped bringing shoes altogether.

Friends would ask me, a little concerned, what theory her school followed. Whole-child? Waldorf? Montessori? You know, all that grown-up stuff. Well, I’d stammer, I guess it’s more like--I’d search desperately for a way to explain it. Then, I’d think about the bumper sticker on Peter’s jeep. No, not the Grateful Dead one or the “I’d rather be in Waikiki” one, but the one that said something about committing random acts of kindness and beauty. I guess that pretty well summed it up.

Now I’m not saying that I let my children make all the decisions around here. We still eat dinner before dessert (most of the time) and we still go to bed at a reasonable hour (sort of). But whenever I hear stories of unhappy kids and unhappy parents in child care situations that just don't sound quite right, I wonder if the parents have chosen childcare that makes them happy, or childcare that makes their kids happy.

And I tell them about Iggy and our blissful year of the lizard.