A mom and dad were hoping to capture an adorable moment on camera as their son walked out of his first day at daycare, but what they ended up filming was something completely different.

For millions of children in the United States, full-time daycare is a reality of life. In 2019, 64.7% of young children were enrolled full-time in preschool or daycare, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This figure is double that recorded 40 years ago, highlighting a change in the way many families seek to balance work and raising children. Kahlia Moussa, a mother of two in Sydney, had no choice but to register your children for daycare.

“In our current economy, parents are literally having to go back to work and our children are being taken care of just to survive,” she said. “We live in a single-parent home because my husband was a burn survivor. So it’s not as simple as saying, ‘I stayed home with my child because my husband worked hard for us too.'”

Like many families, the Moussas find a way to make everything work. That’s not to say there aren’t occasional hiccups along the way, like the one they experienced the first day they picked up their son, Ariah, from daycare.

A TikTok enthusiast who regularly posts about her family’s exploits under the handle @the_moussas, Moussa decided to film a video of the moment, which occurred during the pandemic.

In the clip, Ariah can be seen through a glass door approaching her parents who are waiting for them. He seems fine at first, but the moment he meets mom and dad’s eyes, everything changes. He begins to cry, visibly moved to see his parents again.

The reaction took his parents by surprise. “We had no understanding of object permanence or anything at that point, so honestly we were a little stunned at first,” Moussa said. “He just gave us a hug and immediately stopped crying once we held him.”

Moussa said she and her husband made efforts to prepare Ariah for the change, but felt he was “too young to understand.”

“We had been talking to him about it for weeks even though he didn’t understand, and it’s something we’ve continued in everything we do,” Moussa said. News week.

Although he may not have understood what was happening, all the signs were there to suggest that the transition from his home to his new daycare would be smooth.

“He had done two weeks of visits with me to the daycare to get to know the environment and get used to everyone around him,” Moussa said.

When they dropped Ariah off that first morning, everything went according to plan. “He literally I left without a goodbye“, Moussa said. “When I contacted the school that day at least three times, there had been no tears or anything, so we were actually expecting a really happy pickup .”

Moussa said she still feels mixed emotions every time she watches the video from that day. “It makes me sad, but I also have to laugh at the drama of his cry,” she said. “We recorded him expecting a very sweet moment where he was running out the door, excited to see us because of the drop-off.”

She was happy to report that despite the initial shock, Ariah, now 4, loves her daycare. Moussa also pointed out that the music video was filmed while COVID-19 restrictions were still in effect, which is why they couldn’t rush to his side. “That was the first and only day he cried. In fact, he has never cried at drop-off or pick-up since that day,” she said. “Sometimes we have to chase him to leave now.”