Have you noticed that your kid isn’t around much anymore? Is your house clean? Can you complete a sentence? Your kid might be at daycare! Read on to find out how to know if your child is at daycare.

You’re Holding Something in Your Hand and You Know What to Do With It

This one’s tricky. You finish your food, go into the kitchen and grab a tupperware container to put your leftovers in, then you put your leftovers in and put the whole thing in the fridge. It’s the peculiar absence of chaos that will be your first tip your child is in daycare.

If your child were home, they would have come screaming incoherently around a corner. You’d turn to find out what was happening, and before you know it you’re on your hands and knees cleaning urine out of a rug, or apple sauce out of a fishbowl, or marker off a different child. Then you go to find new clothes for them and realize it’s all in the dryer, so you head down there to get the clothes, but the dryer never got started so it’s just wet clothes. So you grab a hair dryer and start drying pants or whatever and someone is yelling about how they’re hungry even though they just threw their food all over the floor and you reach to the cabinet to get a snack and realize you can’t pick anything up because you’ve got a hair dryer in one hand and tupperware in the other for some fucking reason.

So that’s one.

They Can Use a Toilet All of a Sudden?

You ever walk up to the bathroom to go and the door’s shut and then a 2-year-old walks out? How did they know to do that? You didn’t tell them.

Well, some daycare guy taught them how, I guess. Or maybe you taught them, who remembers?

They’re Singing a Song You Can’t Comprehend

What’s that? Bees? What about bees? You’re eating them? What the hell is this, are you OK?

There Are New, Unexplained Toys in Your Home

This could be a sign of few different things. Maybe a grandparent visited. Maybe another child came over. Maybe your child is going to daycare and behaving so well they’re getting gifts to foster some positive sentiment around good behavior. Or maybe your child is stealing from their daycare. That’s a STRONG possibility.

You’re Running Out of Snacks

I guess they’re going to daycare and eating all the snacks? Maybe they’re sharing with other kids? This kid doesn’t eat one thing when he’s home, I guess he’s getting all his nutritional needs met by eating a pound of goldfish at school every day.

You’re Broke

Now, it might be that you’re living in the 21st century and wages are not keeping up with inflation. But it might also be that your child must have somewhere to be while you work and that place cannot be in your home.

You Have Become Soft

You put your kids down for bed, finally getting a moment to yourself after getting them ready for the day, commuting, working, commuting, making dinner and entertaining them. You are now free to rest. And yet…

You sit in front of your TV and you think, it’s so quiet. I miss them. I wish I had more time with them. Sure, the time I get with them is a lot of work, but aren’t they worth it? Aren’t they wonderful?

You are a fool.

Millions of years of evolution have built chemical weapons into your brain to retrain your reward centers on not only on propagating the species, but on ensuring the success of your offspring. The result? The paradoxical sense that you are both at your wits’ end and that you are not doing enough.

Probably better to send your kids to daycare, where you can rest assured that they’re being cared for by highly trained, well compensated child education experts.

No? Their wages didn’t keep up with inflation? They have to put THEIR kids in daycare, too? What is going on here?!

Anyway, come back next week for our newest piece: How to Escape America to the Socialist Utopia of Sweden, or Some Other Place, I’ll Do the Research Later.