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nannyde 06:00 AM 07-08-2011
Originally Posted by rhymia1:
I guess I don’t understand the problem with shadowing? When a child in my care needs to be shadowed, that means they come with me, and help me do all the things I need to do. If they can't come with me (if I'm assisting another child in with toileting, etc.) they are in the high chair or pack and play with activity/toys. It doesn't disrupt *my* day at all. Admittedly I've only had a few random incidences and not serial biters. But kids in my care quickly learn that being with Ms. K all day is boring

And what if the biter is the provider's own child (in the case of home care?) you can't usually terminate your own child...
To be clear I'm talking about age appropriate toddler biting, because if it were not age appropriate (older children biting) then I would terminate.
It's too costly and finding staff willing to do all their other duties and keep a one year old next to them for weeks on end is very unrealistic.

It's good in theory but it doesn't really work in real life. Having an adult follow a one year old around is expensive. Having a one year old follow an adult around is deveolpmentally inapropriate for that child. No child that age should be following an adult doing foundational care for a group of children. He shouldn't be going with her the thirty times she has to wash her hands... the twenty times she changes diapers... the sixty times she has to GO to redirect a child off of another kid or off of inapropriate toys play... the four times she has to go to the phone... the three times she cleans the table... the two times she sets up lunch.... and on and on and on

It's just not appropriate for the kid to have to follow around an adult. Even if they did it for three weeks... a month... it doesn't give any indication that the day he's allowed to not be within feet of the adult or having an adult litterally with eyes on him every second that he's not going to lash out and bite someone on the face.

Group care should never mean that an adult has to have their visual directly on one kid all day for any length of time. The idea of group care is that it is SHARED attention. Either way of shadowing puts an undo burden on the staff and is not funded with regular tuition. It defies the premise of group care.

We are within a few feet of the kids at all time when they are playing but we do NOT have an adult set of eyes on any one kid all day long. That's just too costly. The adult has to use all of their senses to care for a group of kids. There are many many times a day when each individual child is being supervised by auditory supervision and proximity but not direct visual supervision. (For example... when we are changing a diaper... we are looking at the business end of the kid being changed... At that time the other kids are close but we don't have our EYES on them. During meals we are bringing each kid to the table... bibbing them... scooting them into the table... and giving them their grub. When we are doing each step of that we have our yes on THAT kid as we perform each one of those parts of the task. It may be two seconds here.. five seconds there.. .. twenty seconds here... but that's ALL it takes for a face bite. It happens in a couple of seconds.)

I personally would not pay for shadowing. IME it's just something TO DO in the process of terming a kid, satisfying the bitee parents, and the State. Not saying it NEVER works... but for the most part it's just treading water till the Center can prove without a reasonable doubt that they can't safely have the biter on site.

As long as the parents of the bitee will allow their kid to get bit it will work out. Once the money from those parents are at risk the shadowing goes into full affect as the first step of out the door.
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