Long weeks - a confession

[playfelt]

Too often our ideal when we start daycare is having a group of lovely children all eager for all of the fun things we plan for them as we teach them their ABC's and 123's and about the world around them in our small in home daycare centre. The reality is when we see pictures of children in daycare centres doing activities it is of a homogenous group of 3-5 year olds with the perfect setup and thinking we can emulate that is an exercise in frustration. When I first started daycare that is almost what we could do - the babies only a few months old napped a lot and we spent our days with the older ones doing fun things. Then life changed and now all we have are the babies too old to nap all day but still needing it and no big kids to carry the load - nothing more frustrating than sitting them all down for a "lesson" but no one can talk enough to answer your questions, or join into your singing or remember the colours from yesterday.

In reality our days are spent changing diapers, making meals, and crowd control because the kids have no concept of equality and peer interaction yet. It does seem like many days we accomplish nothing. It has been really hard for me as a trained teacher to first go from a classroom teacher to preschool in my home and now to infant/toddler care but just as a teacher would change grades and have to toss out all of her lesson plans from the previous year and start again, I am in the process of starting again and revamping everything for my new reality including getting rid of toys and games that will no longer work for my age group since that is the group I will have from now till retirement.

I guess what I am saying is we are our own worst enemies and what is expected of us is often more about the pressure we put on ourselves. Rethinking how we do everything from where we store the diapers to how we seat the children for meals or locate the book corner can go a long way to making our days go better.