I've been thinking a lot about this over the last few weeks and am really saddened to hear story after story where providers feel insulted when most or all of their parents don't think of them at Christmas and either bring them nothing, or just a card.
When you have a population of parents that do not consider you within the Christmas season maybe it's time to rethink doing a Christmas season with the kids. Parents are showing you that they don't consider Christmas as a time that has a single thing to do with their provider so why not believe them and honor that?
Maybe next year it would be best to stay away from anything Christmas related. If you do something have it be a special lunch for the kids that you don't normally have and call it your Christmas Dinner. You don't have to do crafts, parties, gifts for the kids, gifts from the kid to the parents etc. You can go with the belief system the parents have and not do a Christmas between your kids, clients, and yourself.
When it comes to yearly bonus or gifting why not consider building a paid vacation into the end of the year for YOU to look forward to? If you are already doing that then maybe another idea is to raise your rates two dollars a week per client and put that one hundred dollars a year per kid away and have THAT be your year end bonus. You would have to have the discipline to not touch it throughout the year but you could enjoy watching it grow thru the year and use it to buy YOU something great at the end of the year.
There's a fine line when you are DOING a lot for the kids and families during Christmas where you can actually switch over the mind set of the parent into thinking that appropriate ROLES in this is YOU being the one giving and them and their kids being the receivers. They can believe that it is actually your JOB and responsibility to make Christmas special for their kid and even to give something to them because they are your client. They can go all year and not look at you as a BUSINESS but rather their employee but when it comes time for year end bonusing they actually believe you are a BUSINESS for the first and only time of the year.
It's sad but it does happen.
My Day Care parents are very generous to me every year and I don't give presents to the children. I don't give any free time to the parents. I don't do a bunch of crafts for the kids to the parents. This year we did one craft that took a few weeks to do where the kids made a handprint construction paper ornament and then decorated it with pasted on little tiny scrunched pieces of tissue paper they tore and scrunched for a few weeks. It was something they enjoyed doing but it cost about a quarter a piece.
We did a Christmas Dinner of some of our favorite foods and listened to Christmas music. It was very laid back and sweet but not a ton of work. I just made something different for lunch than I normally don't have. This year we had phesant, cheddar biscuits, mashed potatoes with portabella gravy and brownies for desert.
So maybe consider focusing on something just for you and the kids like a great lunch or a great desert for snack time and leave it at that. All the effort and gift giving you do for their family isn't going to be something they translate into honoring you the same way because they don't believe they should or they believe YOU should be the one doing the celebration and giving. If that's what they believe then it may be time to believe them and follow in line to that.
Our culture is changing. The way that most parents look at child care is that it's terribly expensive and "too much" in the first place. I found this post on mother.com
http://www.mothering.com/community/f...ycare-provider
never thought of it
I mean, I had heard that if you have an au pair or nanny it was expected, but not for someone with a business. Shoot, when I was a nanny, I only received little gifts. I didn't expect a bonus. Is this the norm now? I mean, I love my CCProvider, but she gets a week paid vacation from parents per year, so I wouldn't expect to give an addition week's bonus. It's hard enough scraping the pay together for childcare as it is. Most providers are not looking to make big $$ with thier job anyway.
It's a very short paragraph but it's packed with the fundamental thinking that goes into parents talking thru this to themselves:
I don't get bonuses why should my provider?
The paid time off IS the bonus. This parent even believes that one week a year is bonus enough.
Childcare is way too expensive.
Most providers are not looking to make big money in the job anyway.
Pick any or all of the above. If you are dealing with clients that have this belief system it may be best to just stay out of the Christmas loop completely and carry on as you normally do throughout the year. If you do a bunch of Christmas stuff with the kids and for the parents you actually may be setting a thought process in their minds that your
ROLE as a provider is to GIVE to them. It may actually backfire on you and leave you empty and sad.
I wish I could pinpoint my secret to why I have
very genrous parents who bonus me AND my staff assistant but I don't really know exactly why. If I did I would definitely tell you guys. I do know that I have
never gifted the kids and I don't spend a lot of resources having the kids gift the parents. I don't make a big hype about Christmas but keep our celebrations to something "I" love doing with my babies.