My 11 month old baby was terminated from childcare for crying for the first week

[daycarewhisperer]

She absolutely should refund your money. That's rediculous. I hope you don't take this the wrong way as the spirit of my post is with a good heart. Most likely she is terming YOU rather than the baby. Your solution to accompany the child to help get him used to the setting is something that IME doesn't work at all. It is a parents go to solution but it wouldn't matter a bit whether you are there or not. You can't help him adjust to being away from you by being with him. You believe he needs to get used to the environment and at his age it's not the environment that is the issue. It's leaving one to one care from a parent who hasn't had anything to really DO but care for him. THAT'S the adjustment. The environment culture shock IS being in a group where one individuals child's needs do not supercede the happiness of the adults, the ease of the adults work, the maintaining of the property and non direct care tasks, the providers children, and the other attending children.

The new child is in a place where many many factors supercede their individual happiness A new parent thinks about their OWN child as being the top of the heap when in reality they are not and should not be. It's GROUP care with adults, their own kids, property, and other kids. The new child is one of the "other kids"... no more... no less.... one of many.

So your solution of you attending either during the week or on weekends would take your child's care or position in that group to the top of the group... above what the adults want... above what's best for the other kids... above the group.

If you would have offered to work with them to have your child be group ready you would have most likely had a completely different response. Having the child be ready for a group essentially means that the child becomes accostomed to their needs being met equally with the needs of the other kids and most importantly... what works for the caregivers. If they aint happy aint nobody happy.

This means that he can NOT have his own adult. This means he needs to be able to self entertain, self soothe, and be able to delay his WANTS to when the group allows for him to have his wants met. If you want him to be successful in the next arrangement work on these things:

He needs to be put to bed wide awake and be able to get himself to sleep without the aid of ANY adult intervention. He should be able to stay asleep despite extraneous noise going on around him.

He needs to be able to self entertain. When he's on the floor his interest need to be the space and the toys NOT creating chaos to score himself an adult to one to one him. If he can independently play without an adult interacting with him that will go a long long way in his adjustment.

He needs to be able to feed himself bits and hold his own bottle or cup.

He needs to be calm when other children are having a rough time and not turn that rough time into something that needs to happen to him.

What you should expect is that he is fed, changed, giving lovins, SUPERVISED, and has good long naps twice a day. You should not expect the adults to respond to his crying with an adult who will devote themselves get him to stop crying. Start at home looking at when he is crying and how you respond. If he is crying because he is hungry, needs changed, or needs some love... then by all means do what he needs to satisfy his NEEDS. If he is crying because he wants an adult one to oneing him nearly every minute to maintain his minute to minute happiness... then he will be profoundly unhappy in a group.

They quit because of his crying. It's your job to work with him to be happy during non essential care times without crying. Give him the experience at home of WAITING for his wants to be met, self sootheing when he is perfectly fine but just WANTS one to one, self feeding, and going to bed WIDE awake and putting himself to sleep. This means no rocking, walking, or co-sleeping. Just put into bed with a clean diaper, full belly, and a quick snuggle. Also work on him taking FULL naps... no cat naps. He should be sleeping about an hour and a half in the morning and a two and a half hour nap in the afternoon. If he wakes up in the middle of it check on him but don't allow him to get up. Those two times of day are essential for most child care providers to have babies resting so that they can provide what they need during awake times... and don't have tired cranky kids.

This is what MOST providers want with a newbie baby/one year old. If you want him to jell into a group quickly THESE are the things that will keep you from going thru this again. Remember that group care means it's not about YOUR baby. Get him ready to make it in a group and think about what you are doing at home that if you had six other kids... could you do it. If you couldn't pull it off then they won't be able to either. Think GROUP and start working towards that.