These kinds of stories makes me want to stop what I'm doing.

The article says :

Under the Day Nurseries Act (DNA), it is an offence for an unlicenced child care provider to care for more than five unrelated children under the age of 10 without a licence — regardless of the number of adults present or on site, the ministry states

There's that word "unrelated" again.

Maybe the ministry should work on re wording this "rule" so there is no confusion. 5 plus the ones that popped out of you to a max number of "X" and that's it.

What really gets me is that this dayhome has been terminated from an agency for over numbers. But not fined? Not jailed? Not reported to the ministry?

Maybe if these things happened they would have learned their lesson.

I'm not saying the child died due to too many children in the home. Let's be honest, they haven't released how many adults were there, they don't know how the child died. And as far as we know this may have been a very loving home with good quality learning and plenty of adults. I agree... it doesn't matter. A rule is a rule. And the breaking of this rule has probably made a lot of future clients question using a home daycare.

We've talked about play dates on this forum. Can I have another provider in my backyard with their kids? Apparently the rule doesn't allow for that. Which most of us can agree is not right.

I really hope this one drifts out of the medias eyes quickly and we can all get back to doing what we do best.

On a side note... how do people get away with having birthday parties with multiple children? Can I throw a birthday party for my 5 year old with 10 kids in attendance? Is it just "paid" children that count in my numbers? What's the difference if my daughter has a friend over while I have daycare kids here?

Just something to think about.