Originally Posted by laundrymom:
Recently during my accreditation process I realized it was actually required to have parental involvement and interaction. Your not supposed to keep them seperate. Also, when my children were small,.. (before school age, ) I couldnt imagine keeping them in a seperate part of my home. I would have had to hire someone to care for my own child. The reason I started this was to stay home with them....
I think Nannyde and I are complete opposites.
Our businesses aren't comparable really. IIRC, you said your average kid is there at your house eleven to twelve hours a day and you have ten kids a day. I also think I remember you saying you don't have staff IIRC?
My kids are here only eight to nine hours a day. I don't allow more than nine hour a day MAX. They have about five waking hours a day with their parents. At the end of the year the services you offer to the families exceeds mine by as much as seven HUNDRED hours more per year. That in and of itself makes our services completely not comparable.
I don't HAVE the kids anywhere near as much as you do. I don't need a familial connection with their parents because the kids families HAVE the kids for so many hours a day. If I were with the kids as much as you are then I would absolutely rethink the "family" connection because kids in care that many hours a day NEED the adult to be connected to them in a family way. The families using services like that NEED the child care provider to be like family.
At the end of the day the kid NEEDS family at some point in the day. My kids get that from their parents not from my house.
I don't have any aspirations to be accredited. I would NEVER get an accreditation from even the lowest level recognition and I know it and understand it. I don't offer the services that are valuable to those who currently decide what is and isn't proper in child care. My business doesn't resemble best practice or developmentally appropriate programing. I wouldn't make it thru the first page of the interview. I'm just not good enough
My son in the day care.... well I started the business of taking care of kids twenty years before he was born and had the home day care seven years before he was born. I didn't start doing this to stay home with him. I was very experienced and established when he came along and knew clearly that I didn't want him raised within my business. I made a LOT of sacrifices and rearranged my life and finances to make sure he was raised independently of my business.
I asked him tonight what he remembers from the day care when he was little. He couldn't name a single kid that was here more than two years ago. He only remembered two that were here within the last two years. He doesn't have any memory of the day care kids because he was rarely with them. He couldn't name a single kid that was here the first eight years of his life.
That's how separate his life has been. I've always wanted him to have his OWN life and only be a part of the aspects of the business that were to his benefit. He has a single working parent but has been able to have the life of a child with a stay at home Mom. That was my hope for him and so far so good.
So yes we are as opposite as we could be. I don't think we have a single thing in common. But that's all good. There are many ways to raise kids and run a successful business and we both do what WE think is right for our kids and our day care business. We are both doing great, our kids are doing great, and our businesses are doing great. What's not to love about that?