How to approach?

[playfelt]

I am so having trouble with this forum and it is not really about what is being asked or even how people are generally responding it is how others are jumping onto the advice that is given. If you don't have any additional advice or ideas to add then keep your complaining to yourself. By that I mean no one is ever going to agree with all of the ideas but if I have a problem and come to the forum asking for advice I want to hear all of the ideas no matter how far fetched they are. I am quite capable of decoding them and deciding which options I will try and which ones I won't.

As mothers we can't help bring our parenting styles and beliefs to the forum but we have to make a distinction between what we do with daycare kids vice our own kids even if our own kids are part of our daycare. I know that is a very hard concept for some to conceive. As a "very" mature - read old here caregiver I can practically tell the age of the caregiver by their responses both in what they suggest or how outraged they get at some of the suggestions. That is the sad commentary on parenting. Wearing a sleeper backwards is a straightjacket to some but a method for dealing with little strippers employed by mothers back several generations - maybe even on the complainers for that matter. Leashes are not new - just fancy tails now to mask what they really are - a rope that secures the child from traffic - just as you wouldn't let the child play at the end of your driveway on a busy street why is it suddenly ok to let them be alone on a sidewalk only a sudden slip from being run over. We make kids wear helmets lest they scrape their foreheads learning to walk and yet securing the child away from moving traffic is considered as anti parenting. I just don't get it - I really don't.

We talk about how each home daycare is unique and that is what we are using as one of our main arguments in the fights with the provincial government over more regulations but still if anyone does something different than what someone else does then they must be wrong and are chastised. We need to be more secure in how we run our own daycares and know that while it is different than others it is not wrong.

Someone leaving the forum because they don't like what someone said is like kids on the playground and one kid taking their ball and going home because they don't like the game. It serves no useful purpose, hurts those that still need the ball (advice) and leaves everyone feeling empty. A good rule of thumb is to not reply in haste. Read a thread and maybe even go back and scan the entire thread to keep the real meanings in your head and then reply - kind of a form of doing a first draft and a finished copy.