View Single Post
permanentvacation 02:18 PM 11-11-2013
Heidi,

You asked to hear from center folks... I have worked in 3 centers. What they did was everyone in the entire center from age 1 and up slept the for the exact same nap time - right after lunch from 12-3. Every room played music the entire duration of nap time to lull and keep the children asleep. If a child didn't want to sleep, a teacher or aid patted their back until they fell asleep. On the very slim occasion that a teacher couldn't pat a child to sleep and they became noisy or moved around too much, they were sent to the office. Sometimes the assistant director/director would give the child a speech and send them back to class to take their nap, if it was obvious that the child was definitely not going to go to sleep, the child would stay in the office. But that almost NEVER happened. It was expected that the teacher/aid would pat the child to sleep no matter how long it took them.

The little babies under age 1 were encouraged to stay awake until the 12:00 naptime. Of course sometimes they would fall asleep while in the swing or being held/fed. However, they were NEVER put in the crib to sleep until the 12:00 nap time. The teacher/aid would let the baby sleep for a very short time and then wake them up and then make them sleep at the 12:00 naptime by patting them.

If a baby under age 1 was crying too much, someone would put the baby in a stroller and take them for a walk in the building or get someone in the office (the director/assistant director) hold the baby, or take the baby to the other baby room and have that teacher or aid hold the baby for a while.

With the older children ages 1 and up (to age 12), if there were any problems such as disturbing the class, fighting with the other kids, not listening to the teacher, anything that made it so the teacher was having a bit of trouble dealing with the child, the teacher would 'pass that child around the building'. They would go to the office for a while, or to another classroom, or go on a walk up and down the hallways with a teacher/aid/assistant director/director/cook.

Basically, if any child plucked the teacher's nerve, they were passed all around the building to all the employees.

They also NEVER kicked any child out of the daycare center. No matter how bad the child was, how many times the child was kicked out of their classroom for any reason, how much the child hated being in that daycare, or how much the child cried even if they cried all day long every day, they NEVER told the parent that the child had any problems. (You know, so they kept that income coming in!) Every day, at the end of the day, every child was in their correct classroom and when the parent picked the child up, every teacher/aid/director/cook told the parent that their child had a GREAT DAY! This is part of why I quit working there.

Also, keep in mind that the rooms were big enough that the teacher and aid could hang out in one side of the room chatting with each other and not even know that the kids were arguing/fighting/getting toys taken from them, etc. If a child came up and told on someone for something, the child was told to stop tattling and told to go play. So for the most part, the teachers weren't really bothered by the kids.

See, we, at home daycare are one person trying to do the job of up to 10 people. That center had a teacher and aid in each age group, a cook, a cleaning lady, a "floater" (a person that can relieve any teacher/aid for lunch, bathroom breaks, etc.) a finance manager, assistant director, and director plus a couple of substitutes for the teachers and aids.

Now, we do have less kids, so we don't need as many teachers and aids. However, overall, we are trying to do the job of multiple people. This is why I truly loved it when I had a full time assistant every day at my home daycare. I feel that I need to have time to be the director and place daycare ads, hold interviews, evaluate my daycare and come up with new ideas on how to improve my daycare, time to be the cook, as I do cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for my children every day, time to be the cleaning lady, time to be the teacher, it would be nice to have a "floater" to relieve me at nap time so I could REALLY get a lunch break instead of having to work with whoever wakes up during nap.

So, us home providers are worn out because we are doing the work of MANY people every day, all day long!
Reply