Underappreciated

You may pay over $200 a week for your infant to attend a daycare, but that does NOT mean the teachers get paid well. I'll flat out tell the world (embarrassed as I am) that I only make $9 an hour working full-time at my school. $9 an hour, when the parents pay an incredible amount of money for their children to attend, and there are well over 100 kids. I have a BACHELOR'S degree in psychology, attended a well-known four year institution, have over $75,000 in debt, have been with the SAME daycare company for THREE YEARS, and only make $9 an hour. 

That being said, I OBVIOUSLY only work there because I love the kids not for the money, and I feel I am doing a good job taking care of them and educating them. I am incredibly overqualified for my job. I get pushed around by the corporation, was denied a promotion for which I was trained for (off the clock, mind you...all training done here is UNPAID) because I had the nerve to e-mail headquarters asking why women were required to wear aprons (I LOATHE the dress code here, an apron is for cooking not teaching), whereas the male employees could simply wear polos provided to them by the company. Not only did I not get an answer, I got scolded by the director, and never wound up with the promotion I should have gotten.

I could complain about the company all day long, but in the end I really just want parents to walk away knowing that though you are paying out the rear for your child to be taken care of, their caregivers most likely aren't seeing an appropriate share of that money, so if they are doing a great job, just tell them. Appreciate them. 

Eagle Eye

Kids can be hilarious. While sitting eating cracker (booooring!) for snack, one of my kids (age 3) screamed out "I want a sandwich! Does anyone have a sandwich?!! Do you?" Even funnier knowing that that particular child doesn't even LIKE sandwiches. What a comedian! One day, while it was table toy time, she asked to take out snow-globe like bottle toys. I let her and some kids take them out to play with, but she quickly became disinterested and walked over to me asking to take something else out, to which I told her no, because she had JUST taken out the bottles. She got really upset and whined "Oooh, but I'm ALLERGIC to bottles!!!" SO FUNNY!

On another note, PLEASE please please if you're an obnoxious, overbearing parent, do NOT purchase the access code to the school's camera so you can watch. If you have no self-discipline, DO NOT get the camera! There actually was a parent that watched it SO much while at work that her employer banned her from watching. On the other hand, there is a parent that has it now that was given a SECOND computer monitor to watch their child, and you can guess that we get phone calls CONSTANTLY from that parent nagging and complaining about the stupidest trivial things. Obviously, the camera mounted on one of four walls of a room can NOT see absolutely every square inch of that room, so do NOT call the center saying "I can't see my child!" It's not like we lost the damn kid, they're probably playing somewhere you can't see. Trust me, if something is wrong, we WILL let YOU know. We had a parent call once during nap-time complaining that their child wasn't completely covered with their blanket. Some people just get too carried away.

It's NOT me, it IS you.

Don't make excuses for your child's bad behaviour, unless you are using your improper parenting as your excuse.

A six-year-old child slapping his teachers, throwing markers across the room, walking on top of the tables, and refusing to leave the room with the director is not being that bad "because he is starting to come down with something." 

I had a three-year-old throw a HIGHLY embarrassing tantrum because someone walked into the room with cupcakes they were taking home, and wouldn't give her one. She clung to my leg screaming "I want a cupcake!" for half an hour...meanwhile another child was being picked up, and her mother literally just STARED at the tantrum-er for ten minutes straight, flabbergasted. She was disgusted by the kid's behaviour, and spoke out claiming "that is the most spoiled child I've ever seen!" as the child starting kicking and hitting me, because the person with the cupcakes didn't give her one. Nothing could calm her down and she took a long time to stop lashing out. When she finally got picked up, her mom told me she thought she was getting sick and that's why she's been misbehaving, and proceeded to ask her daughter if she wanted to stop at the grocery store to get....A CUPCAKE! The kid screamed "no I want a whole tray of cupcakes!" and the mother didn't seem phased at ALL.

A three-year-old child is not biting because he's been bitten "like 200 times" before. Of course it may make him more prone to biting, but I've found it VERY rare for a three-year-old that's developmentally on track to bite. And it's a bit odd that when your kid bit someone, unprovoked, and I asked him why he did it, he answered "because I wanted to!" 

On a lighter note, I love how children are SUCH sponges. I taught one of my three-year-olds today that a bruise is also called a hematoma, and he did a great job remembering that word. I was so proud!

Warning...

Your children like to tell me the things you do.

Some interesting ones I've encountered recently..."My mommy likes to drink wine!" and "Daddy makes Mommy cry."

Your kids have ears. They can hear. They know when you're fighting, they know when you're stressed, and they see how you handle things. They then emulate that, and like to copy some of your favourite phrases to yell at them in the privacy of your home. One of my kids yelled "You're straining my life!!!" at a friend she didn't want to share with. The same told her friend she "can't come over my house unless you have money." I chimed in and said "but I don't have any money," to which another said "go to your mommy and say 'can I please have some money?" The latter child has an older sister, guess where she got that phrase from!

Today, a parent, let's call her the Brady bunch momma (yes, she has eight kids, all her own) picked her child up around 2pm to take the kid to the dentist. Then, she had the nerve to BRING HER BACK. Once the afternoon hits, and children are waking up for nap, they are going HOME, and as numbers get low things shift and accommodations are made. There is NO reason to bring your child BACK to the daycare in the middle of the afternoon, it's just ridiculous. 

And that brings me to another point. If you have more than one child, just take them all with you when you do things (except the special day with mama things). Child #1 WILL see you picking up child #2 and it's incredibly upsetting for them to see you leave without them a SECOND time in a single day. It gets hard for us to explain that their own mother/father cannot handle the brood they produced so someone always gets left out. Here's a helpful tip...STOP HAVING KIDS if you can't handle your entire family. 

Welcome!

I work for a corporation.  What do I do? I am a daycare teacher. At a daycare chain. Who would have thought?

I'm making this blog to complain about all the idiots that somehow are allowed to have children. Sure, we all make mistakes, but I really get angry when people treat children like a possession, and I encounter it ALL the time. It really is heartbreaking. This blog isn't aimed at anyone specifically (or I'm sure someone would figure out how to sue me); just a general rant to the public about clueless parents. I'm sure it will come across as rude, but it is just me being honest about how I feel.

I'd like to start with a few ground rules I've thought of for parents dealing with childcare workers.

1. YOU had your child. It was your choice. PLEASE never, ever, ever complain to me about how hard it is to have a social life. DO NOT complain to me how hard it is to take care of eight children, and don't even think of asking me to "walk in your shoes." If I did walk in your shoes, I most likely would not have kept my legs open long enough to pop out eight children if I could not handle them. 

2. Your child is not a genius. Unless you work at the daycare with me or have a job that is child related, you most likely don't have anything to compare with...and don't know much about what your child should know, other than what you've read online, if you even care that much. Your three-year-old talks into a hairbrush like he is the newsman, cool. That certainly does not make him some sort of imagination savant, and it makes YOU look like an idiot when you think that makes him advanced for his age.

3. Your kid is not an angel, either. Children need to learn responsibility for their actions. Kids get into fights, it's completely normal. Your kid may have gotten the brunt end of it, but that doesn't necessarily make them the victim, they certainly could have instigated the situation. It is my experience that most kids don't get bitten, kicked, hit, scratched, etc. just for the hell of it, usually they are being obnoxious and quite honestly, deserve it. 

4. Treat your teachers nicely. ESPECIALLY if you have an obnoxious child that gets on YOUR nerves. Chances are, the kid gets on our nerves as well, and if a parent of an annoying child treats a teacher poorly, the teacher isn't going to like the kid any more. It's not even intentional, it's some kind of subconscious thing. Obnoxious kid + rude parent = teacher that is super stressed out by your entire family.

5. We most likely know if and when you are at work. It is ridiculously upsetting to know that while you are taking a bubble bath at home, watching Oprah, and having a glass of wine, your children are with us. Attending daycare is very much just like work for a child. Please don't consistently leave them there longer than you have to, it makes us think you don't want your kids. Taking time to yourself every now and then is perfectly fine, but making it a routine thing is so obvious to us, and we WILL think less of you.

6. You NEED to communicate with us. Tell us what is going on at home, tell us stories about your weekend, tell us anything happening that is affecting your child. If a three-year-old has been potty trained for months but is all of a sudden having accidents, there are things that could be happening that may be causing regression...we sometimes see your children MORE hours a week than you do, and we WANT to help (yes, there are children that I see at daycare for 12 hours a day, 5 days a week...that leaves time for them to get fed dinner by their real parents and go to sleep, only to wake the next morning nice and early, get fed breakfast, and be shipped off to daycare for another 12 hour day). Give us the information to be able to help your child. Really, OUR child.