Doing Time: What It Really Means To Grow Up In Daycare

[nannyde]

Read all this a couple of times and hope I understand what you are saying. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What do you do with the parents that do work more than 45 hours a week? Would you just not take their child? I know of one family (I don't have them) but the commute is an hour each way. Then they are at work 9 hours. Right there you have an 11 hour day 5 days a week. I don't think there would be much you could do but not take them. At least they are working and not sitting home collecting off the state and still putting them in childcare.

Training hours count here even for in home childcare providers. I have to have so many hours a year to keep my liscense. Also, I can actually do a program through certain trainings to earn my early childhhood education. Our CCR&R guide you through the trainings for this. You never have to go to college to obtain the degree is my understanding. So really you can be working on it and it take quite a few years. I do know of someone who took 8 years to receive a business degree doing it on line but they were honestly working on it those 8 years.

Also, another post you were saying I think is that they shouldn't be able to call themselves teachers if they aren't one. In my state you can work in a private school as a teacher and not have to have a teaching degree. Alot of the centers here are "private schools" and go up to 8th grade. So legally they can hire them and call them teachers. What is funny is most of the children that go to this one here-most go pre-k and kindergarten then go to public schools. The ones I have known and my neice who is a teacher has told me quite a few from this center have been her students are very, very smart! They score exceedingly high on all state testing, usually in the tag program, and just blow your mind! So maybe they don't have degree's but they are doing something right!

Just a few points I know from personal experience. I think like the food program, childcare is so vast from state to state that there is no way to make it come under one umbrella.

I would not even interview a family that had a 55 hour work/travel schedule. I know that my home is not a proper place for a child that many hours a week. I could never provide what they need for that many hours a week. The child would be profoundly unhappy here and the parent/child relationship would not work for me. I like taking care of kids who have substantial AWAKE time with their parents every day. I am experienced in caring for those kids. I don't have experience with children who have only a couple of awake hours a day with their parents. I don't have experience with parents who are only caring for their kids awake a couple of hours a day. My expertise and my environment is specificall designed for children who have AWAKE care by their parents every day.

The classes we have here in Iowa are set at about the eigth grade level. They are not equivallent in any way to even a high school level of academics. The classes are not suitable for college level credit or college level learning. Taking classes here for your registration requires twelve hours per year of training and that training is aimed at individuals with less than a GED.

The staff assistants in centers are taking THESE classes and they are not even required to take them until they have been at a center for a full calander year. Because of the high turnover in centers you can have workers that have never had to have a single class in child development. They are also not even required to have even basic first aid or cpr until they have been there a year. The only thing they have to have to work here in Iowa is a mandatory reporter training (four hours) after they have been at the center for three months. That's it. They don't have to have a GED, HS diploma, or any experience. If they follow the normal job change as the ones who came before them they could go years before they have to actually take one of our low level classes.

They should NEVER be referred to as teachers and "working on it" needs to be removed from the centers ability to advertise their services. The should be required to fully disclose what the HAVE not what they say they are doing or say they are going to do. They should also be required to explain to parents that the classes the staff DO take are NOT college level classes. They are child CARE classes and they are set for the least common denominator in skill and education. I've taken 240 plus hours of the classes here and not a minute of any of them were at the level of one easy class in high school much less college.

Parents are being deceived plain and simple.

[DBug]

I finished the book a few days ago and found it incredibly accurate to my experience working in a center here in Canada. I was in the toddler room. I had just finished my Bachelor of Education, but because I didn't have an ECE diploma, I wasn't allowed to be called a teacher

I was constantly over ratio doing the job of two people when my partner went on mat. leave. The director was a phone call away, so "technically" we were legal . It was WAY too much work for me, but I was young and needed the job so I kept my mouth shut.

I almost lost one toddler once when I was taking 10 of them from the yard back inside, and he darted off into the road. I left 9 wandering in the center driveway to grab the runaway out of the path of an oncoming vehicle. The parents never heard about that one.

So much of what the author described, I remember quite clearly. I also came away from working at a center with the strong opinion that my children would never go to a daycare center.

I do agree with her that kids are MUCH better off (in the majority of cases) being raised by a parent or very close relative. Yes, the kids that came out of our center were "smart: -- they knew how to count, their ABCs, how to get their own winter gear on, how to line up, how to eat on their own with minimal mess. But there was always a constant crying in that room. I could never have enough arms for all of them. Someone was always hurting themselves, stealing someone else's toy, biting someone, or pulling someone's hair. If there was a poopy diaper, I couldn't change it til the scheduled time. Our change area was up a flight of stairs out of sight of the room. Because we served food in the toddler room, we couldn't change diapers there.

That is NOT how children are supposed to be raised. Warehoused in one room, filed outside for fresh air, sleeping on cots side by side across the playroom floor.

What the author said about center care also does ring true about home daycare, but to a lesser degree. Children DO have to learn to be one of many. Yes, they would learn that with multiple siblings in their own home too, but in my experience, siblings don't all need the same level of care at the same time. In my home daycare, my kids are all between 12 months and 30 months, so they all still need a good amount of hands-on maintainance, leaving less time for cuddling, hugs and being loved on. And I can totally see it in their behaviour . Either form of daycare should only be used as needed (ie. when the parent is actually at work or school), and awake time together with parents should be maximized.

Overall, it's a great book. Not over the top by any means, just incredibly realistic. I wish all parents would read it before considering either a daycare center or a home daycare.

[cheerfuldom]

Regarding the education discussions, I have seen several different daycare facilities ads for "teachers" in my area and the minimum requirement is a high school graduation with 6 credits of early childhood development degree. That is two classes and not necessarily anything that relates to childcare....it could be general ed courses with a declared major of early childhood. So that being said, these parents may be under the assumption that the "teachers" are degreed or "working on it" when in reality it the "teacher" could be a freshman in college with no hands on experience with kids whatsoever.

Most people know in general that daycare workers are not highly paid. How they expect degreed and experienced teachers on those wages is crazy. Really, I would imagine that many parents are concerned or aware of these discrepancies but feel that they have found the best that they can and just hope for the best for their child. Pretty scary if you ask me. Or they hope that the "teachers" are doing this low paying job because they love children but let's be real here and agree that we all know plenty of daycare workers that do this for many reasons that do not include a passion to care for children all day.

[Snapdragon]

I haven't read all of the book, but there are certainly some issues in centers that are problematic. However, I've been on both sides -- my eldest was in childcare from 2 1/2 months to 2.5 years and my my youngest from 2 1/2 months to 7 months. Both were in center care, albeit small centers. Firstly, I do think you can tell if your children are not happy somewhere. With our eldest, one well-known center with all the bells and whistles seemed like a great option at first, but after several days, we could tell it wasn't for her -- nothing wrong with the center; it just wasn't a good fit. We subsequently found another center that was a better fit. Fast foward 10 or so years and I am now in the position of working as a director for a privately-owned daycare center. Yes, I see some problems -- group care is group care -- it's hard to cater to each individual. However, on the other side of the coin, there are some children whose family life is far from ideal and for whom center care provides a sense of stability, not only in the routine of center care, but by the provision of nutritious snacks and lunches. Again, I'm not saying that center care is perfect, but there are some pluses and -- despite the low pay and sometimes stressful work conditions -- there are still many in the field who are well qualified and really do care about the children in our care.

[Unregistered]

Snapdragon, I agree that some parents are not capable of taking good care of their kids and that daycare can afford some stability. But that is not the general rule of thumb. Will check out this book for sure. Parents do need some insight into what our day is like as workers.

[Snapdragon]

Snapdragon, I agree that some parents are not capable of taking good care of their kids and that daycare can afford some stability. But that is not the general rule of thumb. Will check out this book for sure. Parents do need some insight into what our day is like as workers.

I don't disagree with you, which is why I said "some parents." Also, it's not so much that they are not capable of taking good care of their kids either -- that's not what I meant -- just sometimes family life is unstable (parents/family living in temporary housing as just one example).

You are right that parents need some insight into daycare -- there's much that can be improved. However, my point was there are many caregivers who truly love working with children and I would hate all to be tarnished with the same brush - kwim?

[PolarCare]

Love it

I just started reading it and I LOVE it.

I have always been anti daycare for my family. My friends who know this about me were puzzled when I started keeping kids before and after school for a supplemental income. However, I have told each one the same thing: You still don't see me putting MY kids in daycare, do you? There ya go.

[Springdaze]

While I havent read the book, I might if I can get it free somehow, but to me it seems like it is giving parents more to worry about when they probably feel guilty about leaving their kids in care in the first place.

[Froreal3]

I agree

I've been reading this forum for a while, but I just registered so I could respond to this post.

I totally agree with everyone's sentiments. I have been a home care provider and I currently work in a center. The center I work in is part of a large international chain. The company's centers are immaculate, the training is good, the pay is above industry standard, the standards they hold employees to are high and in general they (a bit location dependent) treat teachers as professionals. They actually focus a lot on observation and assessment of children. Parents get parent/teacher conferences, lesson plans, objectives tailored specifically to their child, a truly open door policy, daily sheets with pictures of their children, emails, phone calls from teachers etc. Teachers even call parents and write a detailed report as soon as their child gets a minor boo boo. Customer service is held in high regard and parents get a lot of it. I would go so far as to say they are the best company to work for if you do choose this profession.

Despite all this, group care is group care. Unless it is a Montessori, these children are all the same age group with all the same needs. In a family with multiple children or even a home child care environment the children are multi aged, which helps. We do provide excellent care, but we still deal with the biting, the inability to properly care for children with special needs and burnt out teachers. The teachers that get overwhelmed the most are the infant and toddler teachers. Twos teachers are not too far behind. This is because regardless of everything that teachers do, they are still paid very little. Yes, they pay a few dollars above industry standard, but industry standard is just over minimum wage anyway. The most a degreed (read B.A in ECE) teacher can make is about $13.00 in my state (in my company). Other, less prestigious centers around here only pay about $9.50 for a B.A. Then teachers have to worry about losing hours when there are not many children and what not.

That's the main reason I'm pursuing a MA program in elementary education. Despite my love for what I do, I still need to survive. All of the co-workers that I have ever had have one thing in common. They depend on someone else financially. No, elementary teachers are not rolling in the dough, but at least they make more than a few dollars over minimum wage.

I've come to the conclusion that this field is not for people like me...young professional people who care about education and want to make a living at the same time (unless you're a director or run an in home). It is for people straight out of college or still in college "working on it" who need to get their feet wet with working with children. These people most likely still live with their parents, have a spouse with a decent income, or something similar. It can also be good for older people who have retired and need extra income.

All in all, I don't blame parents if they have to put their children in child care. It is unfortunate because the people that need child care the most (those with low income who need to work two jobs just to make ends meet) end up with the most ridiculously horrible care conditions possible. They can never afford to place their kids where I work. Heck, I can't afford it! Yes, some people do need child care and I don't fault them for it. I don't look down on them either. However, just know that it will never be like the one on one care and attention that mom or dad can provide. Never.

[Froreal3]

We need to require centers to stop fooling parents on their staffs education. Quit counting child care training hours as part of their education. They need to be honest and disclose exactly where the staff are in their education. Do they have a degree or do they not? "Working" on a degree means no degree.

I can't tell you the number of times I have heard center parents say the staff are either ece or they are "working" on it. Working on it is where the money is with staff assistants. Once they have a degree they find out the center doesn't want to pay them for it unless they are willing to have 15 kids per adult in the room. It's a continuous circle of "the lowest educated and lowest paid" person is REALLY the one providing direct care to your kid. They may be supervised in a loose way by someone with an education but the hands on direct care falls to uneducated staff state after state after state. Even crazy arse Georgia has the same provision and they are leading the way.

Yes, centers definitely mislead parents. In GA (where I am) they are now requiring all caregivers to have at least a CDA. Many centers tell parents that their staff either have a CDA or are "working on it." The CDA is just the first step though. Lead teachers are not even required to have AAs...forget about B.As This doesn't mean that someone who has no higher education can't care for children. I did it for years without a degree. However, having a degree does strengthen your knowledge and what you can do to help children and families. It also helps to professionalize the field (a whole 'nother topic).

[nannyde]

Yes, centers definitely mislead parents. In GA (where I am) they are now requiring all caregivers to have at least a CDA. Many centers tell parents that their staff either have a CDA or are "working on it." The CDA is just the first step though. Lead teachers are not even required to have AAs...forget about B.As This doesn't mean that someone who has no higher education can't care for children. I did it for years without a degree. However, having a degree does strengthen your knowledge and what you can do to help children and families. It also helps to professionalize the field (a whole 'nother topic).

http://nrckids.org/STATES/GA/ga_learning.pdf

(2) Teacher/Lead Caregiver.
(a) A center must have a designated teacher/lead caregiver for each group of children.

And here's the GROUPS: The bolded is the total number of kids in each GROUP where there has to be someone with an education. The other is the ratio.


Infants less than one (1) year old or
children under eighteen (18) months who
are not walking 1:6 12
One (1) year olds who are walking 1:8 16
Two (2) year olds 1:10 20
Three (3) year olds 1:15 30
Four (4) year olds 1:18 36
Five (5) year olds 1:20 40
Six (6) years and older 1:25 50

So simple math tells you that the majority of the children will be cared for by Aides.

(4) Caregivers/Aides.
(a) A center may employ caregivers/aides to assist the teacher/lead caregiver in the care
of children in any group within the center. No caregiver/aide who is 16 or 17 years of age
shall be solely responsible for children.
(b) Qualifications of Caregivers/Aides.
1. Be at least sixteen (16) years of age;
2. Have current evidence of successful completion of a biennial training program in
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and a triennial training program in first aid
provided by certified or licensed health care professionals and which covers the provision
of emergency care to infants and children if the caregiver is to be counted as part of the
fifty percent (50%) of the child care staff with the required current evidence of CPR and
first aid training;
3. Participate in the orientation and training required by these rules;
4. Not be suffering from any physical handicap or mental health disorder that would
interfere with the person's ability to perform assigned job duties adequately and in
accordance with these rules;
5. Never have been shown by credible evidence, e.g., a court or jury, a Department
investigation or other reliable evidence to have abused, neglected or deprived a child or
adult or to have subjected any person to serious injury as a result of intentional or grossly
negligent misconduct. The Department may request an oral or written statement to this
effect at the time of application or at any other time. Upon said request, the caregiver/aide
or staff shall provide this statement to the Department.
6. Not have a criminal record; and
7. Not have made any material false statements concerning qualifications requirements
either to the Department or to the proposed or current licensee or commission holder.

The centers were very much behind putting tight regulations on home care because it makes them so much money. If the kid is under THEIR roof they get to have huge ratios and huge numbers of kids per "teacher". If they are under their roof they get to have the kid taken care of by someone who doesn't even have a GED or a HS education.

Just to compare Georgia to Iowa for centers;

Birth to two in Iowa is one adult per four kids under two.
Birth to one is one adult per SIX in Georgia
One year old to two is one to EIGHT in Georgia (that's TWICE the number of Iowa)
Two to three year olds is one to TEN in Georgia. Iowa is one to SIX
Three to four year olds is one to FIFTEEN in Georgia. Iowa is one to EIGHT
Four to five year olds is one to EIGHTEEN in Georgia. Iowa is one to TWELVE

Now you see their HUGE ratios and then look at how they do GROUPS. :confused:

Georgia's new "educational standards" for child care providers has done NOTHING for the actual kids. They've pushed kids from home care to centers where they endure huge ratios and huge groups where only a very small handful of people on site have to even have a GED.

It's all about MONEY. It's not about kids.

[Froreal3]

It's all about MONEY. It's not about kids.

This is very true. I definitely know the state "standards" which are clearly bare minimum (if that) to keep kids alive until their parents come get them... meaning fed and diapered.

[Ariana]

I haven't read the book and I don't really plan too! I know from experience exactly what she's talking about. I remember when I was completing my ECE and having to do placements I would cry myself to sleep some nights because of the things I'd seen and experienced. Being 'told off' for comforting a crying child or teachers (an ECE is a teacher here) making sarcastic and snide remarks to bewildered children and then having a laugh about it.

This is the reason I chose to do home childcare when my daughter was born. I gave up a unionized position making a lot of money (in daycare standards) to be at home making 1/4 what I was making because I didn't trust anyone. The one daycare I did trust, which is where I worked, was 45 minutes away and I didn't want the commute with my baby. Some parents I know put more time and energy into picking out a new car then they do choosing care for their children. I just got contacted by a woman looking for care in 2 weeks!! How is she supposed to help her child transition to a stranger in 2 weeks??!! UGH.

The state of daycare is beyond ridiculous. Low pay makes workers very apathetic. Being overworked is hard on morale especially when you're making a low wage. Parents disrespect is also hard on childcare providers. It's the crappiest job on earth if you think about it!! Unless you are very dedicated to the profession I don't see why anyone would choose this line of work. Everything gets swept under the rug because they're "only children".

[cheerfuldom]

Ariana, I agree! I know some good providers and they still are not what I would want my child to be doing all day. No matter what way you slice it, daycare is not ideal ESPECIALLY for kids under 2! There is a reason why humans don't have litters. We aren't made to care for tons of little ones and little ones need more than that too.

[nannyde]

The state of daycare is beyond ridiculous. Low pay makes workers very apathetic. Being overworked is hard on morale especially when you're making a low wage. Parents disrespect is also hard on childcare providers. It's the crappiest job on earth if you think about it!!

Good post

I think it's so interesting that the author pounded the "teacher" concept and how it was so misleading to parents. I think it's a diservice to the staff assistants too. I think they get called TEACHER by parents and directors but inside their heart they know that if they really WERE teachers that they would be given a LOT more pay and respect.

It feels like the centers use this word first to deceive the parents into thinking their kid gets school... but also to give the employee something GREAT that's free to the center. Saying... or calling them "teachers" is free for the centers... doesn't cost them anything but in reality the concept of a 'teacher" goes right out the window the second the person hits the door. When you have the responsibility to teach but not the skill set to really do it.. you can't be happy in the job.