Burnout: do you ever suffer from it?

[playfelt]

When I was first a caregiver I spent my days doing elaborate crafts and fancy lesson plans and we were always doing something including cooking and baking etc. I had a single mom lament to me one day about how hard she found it on the weekend with her 3 year old because she really had no choice but to do laundry, cleaning etc since she spent evenings with her child and was exhausted herself by the time he was in bed. The kicker was when the child made a comment to the mom one day and this was her lament when telling me the story but the child said he wanted to come to my house because all I did all day was play with him. And he was right.... which got me to thinking. Part of our role as a daycare provider is to teach the children the realities of the world and that means that when tables get dusty we clean them off, when something gets spilled we clean it up, that our work must be done before we can play. After that I started working one task into our day such as dusting and gave the kids a cloth to "check" my work so they polished the table I just dusted or whatever - that way they didn't just scatter dust. Later that developed into free play being just that. When they are free to choose an activity I am too. And if I want to sit and stare at the ceiling that is my choice and they need to respect that just as the child who wants to look at a book when their friend wants them to play a game. Learning to make choices, stick with their choices, respect someone's right to choose something different than you, learn to play alone when necessary, be responsible for their own happiness so to speak are all lessons that come out of me doing a household task or sitting for a break. I remind them that I didn't have snack when they did so now it is my turn. Some days we just need more me time than others and we should not feel guilty.