The large majority, however, provided care that was merely indifferent. They reported that a small number were genuinely stimulating, and another small number were out-and-out abusive. A few years ago the Metropolitan Toronto Social Planning Council investigated a sample of 281 day care homes. Anyone investigating the world of full-time day care quickly amasses files of such testimony.
Taking care of baby and me program tv#
I found them huddled together, leaning over a barricade to watch a TV program showing in the adjacent room. Another time, on an unannounced visit, I found that the "highly recommended" licensed day care provider confined seven preschoolers to her tiny dining room. In one instance, I found the "absolutely marvelous" family day care provider, recommended by trusted friends, sleeping on her sofa while 11 children (she had informed me that she only cared for five) wandered aimlessly around in front of the blaring TV. They looked tired and kind of washed out.Īuthor Linda Burton is another person who has described in detail what she came across while scouring her hometown (the Washington, D.C. The children were not loved the way they needed to be and you could tell. However, the atmosphere, to me, was still negative. I have visited other day care centers that were cleaner, and had academic programs and activities galore. There were 15-month-old children who could not even walk, I believe because they had not been allowed out of their cribs enough to develop properly. The helper pulled one out to wipe a baby's face. There was a bucket on the the floor next to the high chairs where several rags floated in dirty looking water. Toddlers were still in their cribs, some with tear-stained cheeks simply sitting there with no toys, no companionship, with looks of having given up any hope for personal attention a long time ago. Babies were lined up, six in a row, crying, waiting for their meals.
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So I visited what was, at that time, the number-one day care chain in the country. I had spent so long on my education and we did truly need the money. I can remember when I considered sending my own first child to day care. Colquitt details a quite typical set of experiences: In a long letter she wrote me a few years ago, Ms. Take Joanie Colquitt, mother and holder of a master's degree in social psychology. In real life, purchased care is rarely more than a stopgap. There is very little that even comes close. And they would remain with the same family year after year, meshing perfectly with child, parents, and surroundings.īut there are no dream caretakers. These dream workers would all be willing to provide their services so cheaply that there would be little or no strain on family finances. In a perfect world, there would be an abundance of intelligent, well-balanced, devoted individuals willing to attend lavishly and patiently to the demands of strangers' children - enough so that every family who wanted could have their own full-time loving surrogate. Mismatches, repeated disappointments, and occasional horror stories are the rule, not the exception, when it comes to hiring parental substitutes today - as you'll quickly discover once you start interviewing a cross-section of day care users about their actual experiences. While this many day care problems in two years is probably not average, it is by no means unusual. So begins a story in a special issue of Newsweek on family trends.
Taking care of baby and me program pro#
That's what happens when a pro tries to get help. And I just found out I'm pregnant again and due in June." "She's a very nice young woman," Frank says. (When Frank asked one prospective nanny about her philosophy of discipline, the woman replied: "If he touched the stove, I'd punch him.") A few weeks later she finally hired her tenth babysitter. Frank advertised for help in the newspaper and got 30 inquiries but no qualified babysitter. Three weeks after that babysitter started, she got sick and had to quit. "She was fabulous," Frank recalls wistfully. I felt like crying myself." She walked out without signing Isaac up and went through a succession of other unsatisfactory situations - a babysitter who couldn't speak English, a woman who cared for 10 children in her home at once - before settling on a neighborhood woman who took Isaac into her home. "But when I went in," Frank recalls, "I saw this line of cribs and all these babies with their arms out crying, wanting to be picked up.
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One staff member for every three babies, a sensitive administrator,Ĭlean facilities. Her travails began with a well-regarded day care center near her suburban New Jersey home. Since then she has changed childcare arrangements nine times. Frank went back to work part time when her son, Isaac, was 5 months old, and in the two years For five years she ran a Yale University program that studied parental