Dealing with a bad daycare drop-off

My fabulous readers over at Child Caring are offering up all sorts of tips and tricks for making the daycare drop-off go a little more smoothly -- click over and read though the comments. With the exception of a Mommy Drive-By or two, courtesy of a couple of trolls, they're all thoughtful and helpful. Here's a sampling:

Mom of a 2 Year Old: We have trained our two year old at day care to 'push' us out the door. It has worked! It makes him feel like he is doing something that he is in control of and not that we are making the decision to leave. Give it a try!

Another mom: The one thing that makes it so much easier for us is that his daycare has cameras in each room. We can log on to Kindercam.com with a user name and password and see what he's up to. It is very reassuring.

S: As a preschool teacher, I've noticed that children and parents who have a "goodbye routine" do very well.

Cordelia: My problem was not with drop off but pick up. I'd arrive and they'd shout NO and run to the otherside of the play yard. They were having too much fun to go home.

SED: We love "The Kissing Hand" story book and have read it many times to our kids, I put my lipstick on and give them a kiss on their hand to hold on to before I leave them and then they give me a kiss to hold. We make a big deal out of putting it in our pockets to save it etc.

JAGKat: My almost 4 year old daughter has changed daycare settings twice in three years. Both times she settled in within a few days. Unfortunately, I learned in February that I will be deploying to Afghanistan this summer. We started talking with her about it a month ago, and she seemed to understand (as much as a 4 year old can, anyway). However, she has since started clinging and crying when I drop her off in the mornings. She has also developed a sudden hysteria in swim class (part of the daycare program). we've read and watched all we can find on how to help a child deal with a parent deploying (thank you Sesame Street), but I'm worried about how hard it will be on my husband when he has solo dad duty for a year...or maybe I'm worried they'll be fine. Any advice out there?

Read the rest at Child Caring, and if you have any links or advice for JAGKat, a mom in the military who is facing an upcoming deployment, please leave them in the comments section here...