This time of year is like that for the doldrums I think for us more so than in the winter when the media talks about it. It is the end of the school year and for some of us we tend to wane on the programming about now too as we enter the summer. It is a turnover time when we have kids leaving care and having to interview for the new year which seems far away but also daunting given how we are feeling now. It has been a long year for us. In many ways we are like teachers and look forward to June - just that we don't get the two months off to recharge - unless we take it for ourselves.

That doesn't mean we have to empty our daycares for the summer but it means we need to give ourselves permission to relax our program for the summer. Will the children survive if they don't go on that outing, don't do that craft, don't get waterplay today or homemade brownies for snack. If the answer is yes - and it is - then go ahead and make those changes.

I think a couple years into any job or even university training program for that matter it is a time to question. You have been doing daycare now long enough to have some perspective on the parts you like and the parts you don't and after looking at how or if it is possible to change the parts you don't then you can make a decision of how long you want to do the job before looking for another one. But as reggio said just remember the "grass isn't always greener on the other side" as the saying goes.

If you can afford it financially it sometimes works to take a year of doing only part time care arranged so that you have some days to yourself or with just your own kids. Make sure your open and close times are close enough to make for a shorter day if possible.

Over the summer as children go on vacation it is interesting to see how the pecking order changes and children interact. It is often the child you least expected or didn't realize is the one that for some odd reason upsets the applecart not by something specific they do but just because. It might be necessary to replace one or two children suggesting that their needs would be better met in a different type program.

For me it is a positive feeling right now that I am losing my three oldest - all boys to JK. It is time and has been for a couple of months but we will hang in there as they all leave at various points of the summer. By September my whole daycare will be different - and I may wish I had the older boys back instead of new babies but for now the change is making me feel happy so I am going with that. As I said June is a month of reflection in this business and it is good that you are taking the time to think about what went right about the past year and what went wrong about the past year.

Another factor that comes into play is the age of our own children and if their needs have changed. Many of us started daycare when our own children were very little with the idea of we got to stay home with them and they had friends to grow up with and we got paid for it. As they grow up and want different things we have to decide if we still want the daycare since it is now for us not them. Back in 1992 I reached the point where we had three kids and the youngest was heading off to JK so would be gone half the day. I started wondering if it was time to go back into teaching myself or something similar and had seen some ads for teacher's aids that really interested me. That was a short lived look because then I found out I was pregnant and well it was time to start the daycare with my own baby all over again. My "baby" is now 19 and somewhere along the line this time around I decided I liked the freedom of being in my own house all day.

I also started a sideline business with my felt and that gives me a chance to get out and about a bit and to focus on something other than my kids or my daycare kids. As you reflect you may find that what is missing is your sense of identity in that you have become a fixture in the room to the daycare. It is also a sign of a good working group though when you can go through the days in a kind of robotic state and on sleep deprived nights I am glad for days like that but it isn't who we are and finding that again hopefully will give you a renewed sense of purpose for whatever you decide to do.