My wife had a pretty disillusioning experience recently when she spent a year as a daycare worker. She wonders if anyone else has had similar experiences and if they would be willing to share their experiences by writing about them? I should point out that she is intending to write a story about this, hopefully for publication. While we would guarantee anonymity unless the writer wishes his or her name to appear, my wife would do the final editing and cash the checks. Your compensation would be the warm glow of having your words immortalized and having done your bit to make Binarydrone happy, and to help him appease the strident demands of his wife (may she live forever)
P.S. This has been cleared with the mods (may they live forever), but they did mention that the bulk of the stories would be best emailed, although some level of interaction in the thread would be nice, as I would know that folks are reading it and also the thread itself will not sink like a stone.
P.P.S The best email to use is gelfin66 at yahoo dot com (remove spaces and replace words with @ and . respectively). Also, if you happen to know someone who is not a Doper but would like to share their story, that would be wonderful as well.
OK, although this teeters on slightly poor form, I am invoking the “one bump rule” to see if I can generate some interest here. I see that several of you good folks have read this thread, but no one has emailed or replied here.
Perhaps some expansion on the nature of what happened would be in order, and help to draw folks out. Basically it involved some whistle blowing on the part of my spouse surrounding safety issues that resulted in action to solve the problems, but created a subtext of distrust and trouble.
On the other hand, if this experience is unique that would be good to know as well.
I worked in a daycare center about 8 years ago. I was a floater…I helped out in different rooms as they needed me.
While in the infant room one day I saw the teacher giving several of the babies Tylenol. I checked on their charts and didn’t see any med instructions so I asked the teacher about it.
Her response?
“I always give them a little dose when I can’t get them down for naps easily…it helps them sleep better.”
I was absolutely shocked and went straight to the director. The teacher denied doing it and denied saying what she said to me.
I worked in a Daycare Center for about 4 years. I worked with infants, toddlers, and school agers. I mostly worked with toddlers during potty training stages. One incident stands out in my mind. After lunch, it was time to lay out cots so that the toddlers could take their 3 hour nap. I was changing one child on the changing table and had the rest settled on their cots or so I thought. One boy about 3 years old had managed to strip off all of his clothes, including his underwear and was rolling a sock onto his penis!
I still have many memories of marching seven toddlers to the restroom, getting them all settled on the toilets (most of them wore pull ups) getting them off toilets, pulling up pants and lining them up to wash hands! Many messes and cranky toddlers in that situation, but I managed to train all of those babies in the course of 6-7 months. Still very proud of that!
I have many more stories and adventures. That was one of my favorite jobs and those kids were like my babies. I have great memories.
Thanks guys, I think that these will help. A lot of what my wife experienced seemed to go along these lines. She loved those kids as if they were her own but at the same time the daycare itself had some things going on that make her question the industry as a whole. I will pass these on to her. Thanks again.
I worked at a pre-school for 8 years, and this incident happened when I was still in my first year.
In a class by myself, with 21 two year olds. ( the ratio at the time was 12 per teacher) . Naptime. With 21 of them , the cots were pretty dang close together all over the room. A little one came to me and told me he had had an accident. I told him to go into the bathroom and I would be right there. As I was making my way thru the cots to the child’s cubbie to get him a change of clothes, a little boy threw up. On the floor, the cot, and the head of the boy next to him. They both started wailing. Meanwhile, the little one in the bathroom had taken his clothes off, and was “painting” the walls in the bathroom with the contents of his underpants. As I stood there trying to figure out where to start- the mess in the bathroom, the kid in the bathroom, the floor, the cots, the kid with the vomit on his head, or the sick child - the people from the Health Department walked in for our regular inspection.
I must have blanked out, because I don’t remember now how I managed to get everything cleaned up, and the kids settled down. But somehow I did.
After all was calm and clean again, I picked one of the kids up because I really needed a hug -
and he peed all over me.
I’ve been working in a daycare center for just a few months. Mostly with infants, occasionally with toddlers. I’ve noticed that the policies for the center (and I’ve been told, in all centers) are so much in favor of developing the child as a free thinking positive minded individual that problems are pretty much ignored or left up to the kids themselves to solve, even violent issues. I understand that giving a child positive redirection to a safe activity is necessary, but if one child is hurting another you first have to take some initiative to seperate them. The way the rules are interpreted by all where I work is “just tell your friend you don’t like that.” The preschool rooms are attrociously out of control…the legal ratio is 12 kids to one adult so they have 24 kids in there, 2 caregivers, and the kids are running around beating on eachother and largely ignored by the caregivers.
The baby room is a bit better as far as safety issues go, but this center has one other thing that really bugs me: they don’t like sending sick kids home because since we are on a military base, the parents have to be free to “do their missions”. The rule is: any child with 101 degree temperature must go home for 24 hours. So we take their temperature (under the arm) and it’s 92. They say since it was taken externally add ten degrees. That makes it 102. We then have to call a manager to re-take it and confirm it. That manager will ALWAYS take it improperly, aloowing the kid to flop their arms around, or remove the thermometer before it beeps, causing an incorrect reading of something below 101. So the parents don’t get notified, the kid gets sicker, and then everyone gets sick.
There’s more, I’ll assemble all my details and email you.
I think that the sorts of stories that we are looking for would tend to be negative ones, although if the overall experience was one that was positive that would be good information to have, as we want to present a balanced view.
The safety issues touched on by acrossthesea are of particular interest, as that was a major issue for my wife (to say nothing of the political fallout when she tried to make things better). A lot of what happened seems to have been centered around not giving the parents the information that they would need to make informed decisions about the care that their children were receiving. As if the focus was more on “handling” the parents than it was about caring for kids.
I worked in a daycare for several months in the “Infant Room” (5-18 month-old rugrats). I only ever saw the very best of care and attention. There were only two tough days.
One was when one wee one started bawling all out, no holds barred howling. No idea what set her off. But, this caused a chain reaction. … Another kid, then another, and another an another. They all started yowling unconsolably and for no reason it seemed, other than to join the chorus of WAAAAAAAH!!! Until it was a cacophony that sounded like a cross between cats in heat and broken bag-pipes.
The two other rooms (for toddlers and pre-schoolers) started wondering what was heck going on - what was happening in the Baby Room! It was Bedlam! We got them dressed for outdoors and ushered them into the playground - they went silent the instant they got outdoors. I suspected a conspiracy.
The other bad day was when a mom had to drop off her 4 month old for emergency daycare. This was a beautiful, baby. So quiet and thoughtful… while mommy was present. As soon as mommy left, it metamorphosed into Monster Demonspawn Baby from the Sunnydale Hellmouth! I can’t believe any creature can scream non-stop for 8 hours without eating sleeping or, apparently, breathing. Ugh. Damienella was not allowed to return.
Oh, in that case. I still only have really positive things to say. Our daycare went all out when it came to health and safety - from disinfecting procedures for cots, bedding, and toys, to sunscreen, to food preparation that accommodated for one child’s food allergy. The protocol for administering prescribed medication - with the parent’s signed consent and in exact accordance with doctor’s instructions - was very strict and specific, and was always carried out to the letter.
We also had one kid who had all the tell-tale signs of some kind of ADD. He had the bad habit of throwing heavy toys at smaller children - you have no idea how fast you reflexes can be until you have to leap across the room to intercept a toy phone that was launched at a baby’s head. That child could really, really try the patience of even the most kind-hearted adult, but still no one ever snapped at him. Though I will admit we’d sometimes grit our teeth and have Very Wrong fantasies about wrapping him in duct tape and shipping him to Siberia.
And there were a handful of social rules for playtime: like we had no “bad guys.” When they role played in the playground imaginary “bad guy” adversaries were allowed, but they weren’t supposed to single out other kids to play the part of the “bad guys” - just in case someone got pigeon-holed in the negative role unfairly.
The other play rule was “no guns” - so the pre-schoolers were really creative with their approaches to cops and robbers. It was pretty cool.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I’ve been down with the flu or I would have jumped on your offer immediately.
I guess the big question is do you have any “insider” stories that parents might want to know about? For instance, the second daycare at which I worked had an unwritten (yet chiseled-in-stone) policy that no matter how bad a kid’s day was, we always tell the parents at pick-up that he or she “had a great day.” The only exception to that was if the child’s parent, or other parents, witnessed the child in a state of pure misery. In that situation, the acting lead would allow as how the kid’s day was “a little rough,” or that the child “was a little off.” As a point of pride, and under director pressure, our lead teachers were expected to make sure that every child adjusted to daycare. Never mind that some of them never did adjust; we turned a blind eye to it. And we always knew whose parents were coming down the hall (glass doors work both ways), and how block the parents view and jolly their child into a momentary semblance of happiness before the unsuspecting parents were within ear shot. A vacuum of information surrounded parents on every possible issue (injuries included of course) because–as the mantra passed down to us by our less pleasant director went–“We never tell parents anything that might make them think their children aren’t getting the best possible care at” our facility. Those of us who wanted to speak up were told it wasn’t our place; all concerns went up through the chain of command, and somehow dissolved. The fact that we were truly better than most places in most ways, and shouldn’t be put out of business by the fickle emotionality of parents, was our justification for keeping parents in the dark. It was in the children’s best interests for us to stay in business. Nevermind the fact that Directors were in the office out of ear and eyeshot, and leads left at about threeish, leaving those with the least training to handle the worst hours of the day (3-6), Shit. Powers flashing better send
After telling a few parents when their children had “bad” days , and then watching the kids get a beating in the parking lot, I, too , started telling the preants they all had a great day. I think the parents should be told if the child misbehaved, but I hated to see the kids get punished twice. After all, we didn’t punish them at school for what they did at home.
It was always the parents we had the most problems with. Kids are kids, and rarely did anything that couldn’t be dealt with without yelling at them or smacking them. I loved my eight years there, and if it wasn’t for the money ( or lack of) , I would still be there. I miss it!
This is off topic but the stories related here are EXACTLY the reason I used to randomly pick up (or at least vist) my daughter at a wierd time at least once a month. Sometimes I would drop by at lunch to “say hi”, or I would pick her up a few hours earlier than usual.
I didn’t expect her to be in a joyful mood everytime I saw her, I just wanted to be confident as possible that there wasn’t anything funny going on - and I admit for the most part I was very happy with the staff. They had no problem with my comming by. My daughter wasn’t clingy so she wouldn’t cry when I left after a mid-day visit, she would just wave bye-bye. The staff was also always willing to talk honestly about what was happening at the center.
I work in a small private kindergarten here in Budapest, for 3-6 year olds.This year is my second (and last) year working there.
Personally I think there’s a real conflict of interest involved in these kinds of operations- between making sure that the parents- or customers are satisfied with the care their child is getting, and with telling them the truth about their child’s behaviour. There seems to be a perception that reporting the negative elements of the child’s behaviour would reflect badly on the staff- though having seem the way some of the parents react when they are told that their child is a problem makes me think perhaps they’re right. (If a child’s behaviour is obviously very bad, someone will usually have a quite word with a parent, albeit sugar coating the problem as much as possible)
Some of the stories I could tell you about how the kids are treated by their parents would make you weep, or get very angry. I’m not talking about absuse, of course we would intervene if there were any signs of that. This is more subtle.
Like the parent who was setting up her 5 year old daughter for a lifetime of eating disorders by insisting that we only let here have one helping of food at meal time- so while everyone else is free to eat as much as they like, we had to tell this girl she couldn’t have anymore. Admittedly, this girl did eat like a pig when left to her own devices, and was perhaps a little overweight for her age, but not dangerously- and we teachers came to the conclusion that eating was her coping device for dealing with the- very apparant- problems in her home life. and what did this great mother feed her child for breakfast on the- numerous, days when she didn’t have time to give her breakfast at home? chocolate.
when comfronted about her daughters behavioural problems, she replied her daughter was a musical genius (she was a musician herself), and shouldn’t be compared against the other, less execeptional children.
Then there is the real problem child in our current group, whose father had a child with a girlfriend at about the same time as this boy’s elder sister was born to his wife. Apparently he now likes to loudly and unfavourably compare his two kids he had with his wife with this other child- while they are present. When we quietly suggested to the mother that she take her son to a child psyciatrist, she said that all her friend’s children are just like him so there can’t be anything wrong with him.
Working in a kindergarten can be very rewarding, but boy, can it be depressing some days too.
