I arrive after most of the other parents. Picking your child up late from nursery, daycare or simply later than many other families can be enough to wake up a strange kind of guilt. I see my child and I am happy to see him. Then I look at the time and my brain starts comparing: did everyone else come earlier? Was his day too long? Could I have organised things differently?
Within seconds, the clock begins to feel very important.
When pickup time starts to feel like a score
My brain runs the calculations: the hours, the journey, the work that overran. But it forgets some important information, such as every family’s different constraints and whether leaving earlier is actually possible.
It races instead towards the conclusion: I should have done better. There is no stopwatch, obviously. But pickup time can start to feel like a mark.
Coming back to the real question
If the days genuinely seem too long or difficult for your child, that is a real question to explore with the nursery team and as a family. But comparing ourselves with parents whose days and possibilities we know nothing about does not help us answer it.
Pickup time tells us what time we arrived that day. It does not tell the whole story of our child’s day or the quality of their parent.
Tomorrow, my brain may compare the times again. When it does, I can remind myself: “The clock gives me a time, not a score. I’m doing the best I can with today’s constraints.”
