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Tag Archives: daycare

Potty Training, End of Week 1

19 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, Life and Love

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

child care, daycare, diapers, motherhood, parenting, potty chart, potty training, rewards, stickers, toddlers, training pants

Well, it has been a little over a week since we began potty training, so I thought I’d give you an update.

I was a little nervous sending Owl off to daycare, because Daycare Lady insisted on Pull Ups.

Now, we love Daycare Lady.

I lucked out with her in many ways, and probably in more ways than I realize. For example, she just mentioned to me recently that the woman who runs the daycare down the road from her claims that it “isn’t her job” to help parents with potty training, that she “just needs to keep them safe.”

Ladies, that daycare is Daycare One, from my daycare hunting days.  I never even thought to ask them, when looking for a place for my 11 month old, whether they considered potty training part of their job. It went without saying. Or so I thought.

SO. I lucked out, even with Helper Lady’s foibles thrown in.

But the diapers have always been a bit of a problem. 

Despite the fact that Daycare believes in non-toxic cleaning products and organic, from-scratch meals, her hatred of germs makes her heavily pro-disposable diapers.

Which means that she insisted on Pull Ups, despite the fact that The No Scry Potty Training Solution and Hannah from Hodgepodge have both warned me against them, and I know for a fact that Not Mary Poppins over at Daycare Daze puts them in underwear to train.

I pointed out to her all the arguments against Pull Ups – that they’re still diapers, so the kid won’t feel any different, that they are more absorbable than his cloth diapers so it would actually be a step BACK and so on.

We compromised on Pull Ups OVER his underwear, because she insisted that she couldn’t allow him in only underwear, due to hygiene concerns.

For the next three days, he came home wearing Pull Ups only, with the underwear in his diaper bag totally untouched.

By the third day, I was livid.

Meanwhile, Helper Lady was telling me at the door in the mornings that “Baby no understand. He good boy, but he no understand, Mommy.” (Helper Lady calls all the mothers “mommy”)

Oh really? Our potty chart begged to differ. 

In fact, the morning she told me that, he had peed in the potty SEVEN TIMES and pooped once, and we hadn’t had an accident in two days.

Daycare Lady told me that he was going fine for her, but not always for Helper Lady. Daycare Lady also suspected that Helper Lady, being older, was losing track of time and not taking him often enough.

And as Helper Lady pointed out, “You have one baby, Mommy. I have eight.”

Fair point. Plus, there’s a difference between running around the house with no pants on and the potty RIGHT THERE, versus having a diaper and pants on, a house full of kids to play with, and a baby gate between you and the bathroom.

But still.

It pissed me off, because I am a first time mother, and they are supposed to be the child care professionals. I felt like they should be better at potty training than me, not worse.

And then when I picked him up on Thursday, I was told that he had pooped in his Pull Ups and that it had burst out of his Pull Ups and gone all over the floor in a manner that I’m sure Hannah would sympathize with.

My first reaction was actually a mild schadenfreude. That’s what they get for putting this kid in disposables. Poop has NEVER stayed within the confines of Owl’s disposables. Serves ’em right.

I guess they figured the same thing, because the next day not only did he come home with underwear on under his Pull Ups, but Helper Lady informed me that he DID understand for pees!

So I would be triumphant, BUT…

Since the Poop On The Floor, not only has he been having poop accidents in his pants, but he bursts into tears when they happen, pointing at the floor and howling “NO POOP DOWN DOWN!!!!” and “Waaaah, MY POOOPED…” heart brokenly.

Witnessing one of these meltdowns on Saturday filled PH with so much fury that he began to talk about sending Owl elsewhere.

So Sunday we went to the dollar store and bought some crappy plastic animal toys. We put them in a clear vase on the mantle and told him he could have one every time he pooped in the potty.

When he finally had a success, we gave him ALL THE CANDY, and special BUTTERFLY stickers, and CARS sticks, AND A PLASTIC WOLF.

He was so delighted he kept sticking the plastic wolf in the potty and saying “Look, Wolfie, MY POOPED!”

Over the next hour he then proceeded to produce what Not Mary P would call “iotas of shit” in order to receive a hippo and a dinosaur. After his nap and before bed, he pooped one more time for yet another plastic animal.

We’ve done what we can to reverse things. I’m going to go put him in his undies and Pull Ups, and take him to daycare.

Wish him luck. 

Well, F*** Me, Owl Survived A Daycare Centre

11 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

bad words, child care, children, daycare, toddler

Owl’s Daycare Lady is on vacation and I’ve been patching together care for him piece by piece. Thursday and Friday of this week were courtesy of PH’s corporate daycare downtown. As part of his benefits he gets 2 free days a year.

I was reluctant to send him to one of these massive centres because studies have shown that kids in these environments have high cortisol (the stress hormone) levels. No matter how well trained and caring the staff, it’s just not the safety of home. That’s why I wanted a small home daycare instead.

But we’re low on options (next week The Farm Fairy is taking him one day and the other three days I have hired the newest helper at Owl’s Daycare, who I slightly distrust because she wears impractical shoes and spells “sure” “shore”). So on Thursday and Friday PH took Owl downtown and I biked to work.

I was worried that the change of routine, and being dumped all day at a big centre filled with complete strangers might stress Owl out.

PH was like “have you met our child?” and he was right – we know because they have a parents’ webcam.

PH sent me running commentaries on all of Owl’s doings:

Food time! They’re sitting at the tables and red smocks are being put on them all. It’s really cutely ridiculous. Owl’s seat is mostly out of shot so it’s hard to see how he’s doing. However we may safely assume the standard OMNOMNOM.

These children are good eaters. Not one of them has stood up yet. Owl is in tough competition.

And just as I say that, the first one falls. Tension mounts.

Another two fall, and the gustatory battle truly begins.

The last standing warriors have been grouped together at one table for the final eat off. 

Owl is down! He finishes outside of the medals in fourth place! What a stunning turn of events! 

So clearly Owl had a good time, and I was silly to worry.

But you never know what can happen when you leave your child with strangers. Look at this poor kid, who got his face scrubbed with a Magic Eraser or something.

But Owl did fine. His face is not burned by cleaning chemicals, and he does not appear to be in the least traumatized.

But he DID come home yesterday repeating something that sounded an awful lot like a swear word.

Tell me, what does it sound like he’s saying to YOU?

In Which I Get Medical Advice From An Oompa Loompa, And Distrust It

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

baby, colds, common cold, coughing, daycare, doctor, pediatrician, sick, sleep, toddler, virus, winter

Owl coughs.

He’s been doing it for months and months. Ever since he got croup, really. It’s practically part of his personality, now. We hardly notice it. His nose runs, and it gives him post nasal drip, and then he coughs, mostly at night when he’s lying down and we’re trying to sleep.

(Incidentally, this is hilarious, especially when you’re really tired.) 

At first I took him back to the doctor for it. Each time the doctor told me it was “probably viral” and that colds are common in the first winter in daycare.

“He’ll basically have colds non-stop all winter,” said the pediatrician jovially (my pediatrician looks exactly like a human sized Oompa Loompa. Not the weird orange men from the Gene Wilder film but Oompa Loompas as described by Roald Dahl).

How I imagine my doctor’s family must look

Plus Owl tended to pick up worse colds from his visits to the doctor’s office. So I gave up.

But Daycare Lady didn’t.

“I’m sure he needs antibiotics or something,” she said. “He’s always coughing, and it sometimes sounds like there’s boiling water in his chest.”

Every now and then the coughing gets worse.

It happened again this weekend. His coughing was so bad that PH was up with him again and again in the night, and gave up entirely at 3 am  when he handed me Owl in bed (usually it’s between 4:30 and 5:30 am when Owl joins me in bed).

Even in the car he’d cough and cough. When he breathes his chest sounds like it’s percolating coffee.

After the third night of this PH said, “take him to the pediatrician.”

Daycare Lady wholeheartedly agreed.

“You have to PUSH them. My brother is a pediatrician and when my little girl was small he told me that from what I was saying over the phone, he was sure she had pneumonia. I took her to the ER and the ER doctor said she was fine! Viral! Go home! So I said “you PROVE to me it’s viral!” and I insisted on an xray and the xray showed pneumonia!”

So I went in determined this time.

When Jolly Doc came in I explained that he has been coughing for months. Sometimes it’s worse than others but always THERE.

“Does it get better and then worse again?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“It’s a cold.”

“An eight month long cold?”

“No, he just keeps getting colds one on top of the other. Happens all the time in daycare in winter.”

“But it’s June!”

“The cold season seems to be lasting longer than usual. We’ve had a cool spring.”

“But there’s only four other kids at his dayhome and none of them are sick!”

“You can’t tell me that the other kids never get colds.”

“No, they get colds occasionally, but they get sick, with stuffy noses and coughs and fevers and then a week later they’re over it. Owl’s symptoms are non-stop, and his nose rarely gets really clogged. It’s just constantly draining clear or yellow snot.”

“Because he keeps catching new colds before the old ones are done! I see this all the time. There’s no point in doing tests and no medicine will help you. His lungs don’t sound asthmatic, and I don’t think it’s allergies – you say it happened all through the winter, so it’s not likely seasonal.”

“Some units in our complex have had problems with mold, but we vacuumed and washed his bedding…”

“Yeah, and he hasn’t had a history of lung problems or breathing problems. This doesn’t look like allergies. It looks like a cold.”

“But he always looks like this!”

“Yes, well,” he laughed, “we call them “snot-nosed kids” for a reason!”

He DID say he would refer me to an eye doctor about Owl’s clogged tear duct. He said they usually resolve on their own but after a year he gets them dealt with “you’ve been surprisingly patient.”

Yes, well, considering my child is constantly coughing, a teary eye hasn’t really been high in my priorities.

I left feeling so frustrated.

How does he know that Owl hasn’t had the same persistant infection ever since October? Maybe he fights it off for a while and it keeps coming back. Why is he the only kid in his daycare who is constantly coughing up phlegm?

would you like some snot with that?

But I’m really frigging tired and I don’t see why he is constantly suffering from colds that no one else seems to be giving to him, or catching from him.

Owl’s First Scholarship

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by IfByYes in 30 Posts To 30, From The Owlery, Life and Love

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

child care, compassion, daycare, guilt, unemployment, work

PH and I can’t decide what to do about Owl’s child care situation.

Perhaps it is typical of us that we are turning such a non-issue into an issue.

Reasons why Owl’s care should be a non-issue:

1. Daycare Lady was the first person I called when I got The Infamous Email, because I was shaking and upset and Owl was clinging to me and going “maaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa” and I have never been so close to putting him through a wall as I felt at that moment. So she said to bring him right away, of course, and please, not to worry – that no matter what, Owl would never lose his spot with her.

2. When PH and I came to pick Owl up at the end of that day, she spent fifteen minutes trying to persuade PH that we didn’t need to pay her while I was out of work. That she would not charge us until I found a job again. PH of course refused to consider that.

3. Daycare Lady and her older daughter (who has been known to CRY on weekends because she missed Owl) both pleaded with us to continue bringing him. PH and I assurred them that we would, because has developed an attachment to them (he now calls Daycare Lady by name and has invented a sign for her, which is tapping his chin for some reason) and we wouldn’t want to yank them out of his life like that. They basically responded with “yes, please, please don’t take him away from us.”

4. When I picked Owl up after my interview on Thursday, Daycare Lady again tried to convince me to accept Owl’s care for free while I searched for work: “Carol, I know how men are, they are stubborn about money and their pride causes problems, but Carol, please believe me when I say that I want you to keep bringing Owl and I don’t want to charge you. This can just be between you and me. Don’t try to give me money for this. I want you to bring him.” When I said that maybe we could “figure something out”, like taking Owl down to part time, she insisted again and again “Carol, please. You are like me – your family lives far away. Owl is like my family now. Please. I want you to think of us as your family. Please, bring Owl tomorrow. Bring him every day. We want to see him. When you get work again, then you can pay again, but until then, I feel it is wrong to charge you.”

5. It is undeniable that Owl would prefer to continue going. How PH and I ended up with such a little extrovert, we have no idea, but there is no arguing his extroversion. He hates being housebound. On the day that I kept him home, between The Day Of Infamy and the job interview, he kept bringing me his boots and signing “coat”, and then, if that didn’t work, he’d haul MY boots over to me. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside, he loved walking in the snow because HE LOVES A CHALLENGE. He just wanted to be out, out, out. We took three walks that day, one of which was all the way to The Esso, which is a half a kilometre away. Yes, HE WALKED all the way there. In the snow. Tiny step by tiny step. He wanted to walk back, too, but I carried him for time reasons.

So, to sum up:

  • Owl loves daycare.
  • Owl’s daycare loves him.
  • It won’t cost us money.
  • It would make people sad to actually refuse.

 So where’s the problem?

Well, seriously, how do you accept something like that from someone? At what point does it just become taking advantage of someone’s generosity?

It didn’t help that when PH dropped Owl at daycare today, intending to reopen the “please let us pay you” conversation, Daycare Lady met him at the door with a heaping plate of food for us – rice with some kind of lamb curry on top – lest we grow faint in our house-cleansing efforts.

At what point does it become too much? How can we get her to accept our money? 

In Which I Learn That Motherhood Is Bad For Business

16 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love, Me vs The Sad, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

breastfeeding, daycare, employees, employers, hiring, jobs, schedules, work, working mothers

Yes, I’m blogging about work because… well, I don’t care any more.

Work is…

…not going well.

While I always knew that motherhood restricts life in many ways, including in the workplace, I never really fully comprehended how much it damages me in the eyes of an employer.

I did know that employers look down on breastfeeding mothers, which is why I expressly (pardon the pun) avoided discussing my breastfeeding ways in the interview stage, and why I was so dismayed by my boss bursting in on me pumping guiltily in the bathroom on my first day.

But I didn’t really grasp how very undesirable motherhood is.

Good employees don't have one of these

Before I signed the employment agreement papers, I brought up my daycare’s hours.

It hadn’t come up in the interview because, well, it hadn’t come up. He didn’t ask, and I wasn’t even sure, at that point, what my daycare’s hours were.

But before I agreed to work there, I made it clear that my daycare closes at 5:30 pm, and that official policy is to charge me 5 bucks per 5 minutes that I am late. I asked if they had morning or afternoon shifts available.

I was told yes, there usually is an earlier shift and a later shift, leaving an employee alone in the clinic for the first and last two hours of each work day, and two in the hectic middle times. I asked if it would be okay that I could only work the earlier shift.

I was told yes, that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Ever since then it has been a problem.

Continue reading →

I Want My Baby Back, Baby Back, Baby Back…

24 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

child care, child development, daycare, going back to work, television, working mother

I’m sure you’re all dying to know how Babby’s first day at daycare went.

Because clearly, your lives all revolve around MY life.

Oh, the ego-centric bloggerverse.

Anyway, he was fine. That massive all-night sleep ended at 4:45 am, so he was already exhausted and drowsy when I dropped him at daycare. Daycare Lady had no problem putting him to sleep thanks to that.

Well, thanks to that… and the sleepy suit.

She told me that he gobbled an egg (he had already had bacon and eggs and toast at home that morning), and pita, and LAMB SHANK, and rice, and crackers…

“He’s a really good eater!”

So I hear.

“He likes to feed himself.”

Yes, yes he does. I didn’t use the word “Baby Led Weaning” in case she thought I was a nut job, but I did tell her that he had never had purees – that I had always just handed him stuff off of my plate, and he’d eat it. Which is true. (Never mind that for the first month or so, he would just suck on it, rather than eat it, so he didn’t really start solids until seven months old…)

Anyway, he played and she said he didn’t cry at all. When I cam in the door he signed “milk” at me (Daycare Lady also thinks it means “Mommy” because she said there were times when he made it during the day and had no interest in the milk she brought). He wasn’t overjoyed to see me, just “oh, hey, about time you showed up. Boob me, woman.”

After he’d nursed for a bit, he went back to crawling around while I talked to her, wrote checks and so on.

All of that was good. But I didn’t experience much relief because I was drowning in the horror of what I had seen when I had arrived to pick him up…

I arrived about fifteen minutes earlier than I had told her to expect me. I looked in the window and saw him playing near the door while snacking on some pita.

AND DORA THE EXPLORER WAS PLAYING ON THE TELEVISION SET.

*dramatic mus8c* Dum Dum DUM!

Most of you know, I think, that I’m a little weird about television. I hate it with a passion. HATE. IT.

I mean, yes, I do watch T.V. But never on my own, as a solitary activity. Wouldn’t occur to me (well, except for those first couple of months when Babby had me pinned to a chair all frigging day). We don’t consider cable worth paying money for.

I like certain TV shows – House M.D., Glee, Sex and the City, Friends, Dragon’s Den, Mythbusters, Canada’s Worst Driver… but I hate commercials. I like to watch things on DVD whenever possible.

And pediatricians agree that television is totally mind-rotting for under-twos. Especially children’s television! I would rather Babby watch the news than children’s programming.

I specifically chose this daycare because the lady said the kids didn’t watch tv. SO WHY WAS DORA THE EXPLORER CHATTERING INANELY AT MY CHILD?

To be fair, he wasn’t watching, or plunked in front of the set. But it was ON. He could be hypnotized by it at any moment.

I brought it up almost immediately, and the Daycare Lady said that it was unusual. She said that she hadn’t even had cable in the room until she went on vacation, when her stand-in who took over daycare insisted on it for her own children. I didn’t care about before. I cared about NOW. Would it be a regular thing? I was assurred not.

But how can I know? My trust in her feels shattered.

I realize that this sounds melodramatic, but this is important to me. I tried to make that clear to her.

It brought home to me that 5 days a week, now, I am not raising my child. Someone else is. I have no real control over how he is treated and what he is taught. I can make my preferences clear, but I can’t KNOW.

What if he is turned into a tv fiend? What if his first word is “Dora!” or worse *shudder* “Max” or “Ruby”?

I realize that all children get exposed to the culture of tv eventually, and I thought I was resigned. I said as much to The Corn Fed Girl on her post about Those Moms (since I am one).

But he’s 11 months old.

It feels so early to let go, to give up my influence to others, to let someone else decide what my baby with his tender developing brain is exposed to.

I cried myself to sleep. 

Two More Daycares (I think I’m in love)

22 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, My Blag is on the Interwebs

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

baby sign, child care, cloth diapers, daycare, jobs, parenting

Well, our anniversary was a fiasco.

I was stressed out from another day of visiting daycares and fruitless job searching. The mix-cd I had carefully compiled for PH wouldn’t burn. I ran late trying to get the gift to burn and ended up running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to gather stuff for the sitter, and totally forgot a bunch of stuff.

So I picked PH up from work late, anxious, frustrated, and with no present in hand and worse, with no sleepy suit or sea horse for the sitter.

PH had clearly had a bad day at work. He didn’t want to talk about it. My stress levels were through the roof. I didn’t want to talk about it. We kept accidentally ticking each other off and having to apologize.

The movie was awful (Mr. Popper’s Penguins. It had some good lines and was cute enough that I could almost have forgiven it for having nothing in common with the book… except for the repeated penguin-poop joke scenes. I observed to PH that some guy must have gone home at the end of a long work day day and when his wife asked him what he had done that day, he would have said “I created CGI poop gushing out of a CGI penguin’s cloaca.”) and when we got back to our friend’s house we learned that Babby had been screaming pretty much the whole time and had refused to eat or even drink his milk.

They were hanging out with him outside because he didn’t scream outside.

All in all? It turns out that weekday anniversary celebrations leave much to be desired. So we’re going to try again on the weekend.

Now, as for daycare, I think I have some good news… but I want to hear your opinion.

Daycare Three

Distance: three minute drive from my house. The closest yet.

Caretakers: One, a fiftyish Persian (of course) lady who was a teacher back in Iran. Her English is mediocre (much better than my Farsi, of course).

Details: $40/day (she was vague about full-time rates). Lunch and snacks provided. The kids were sitting at a table snacking on crackers when I arrived, staring at Dora the Explorer on a strategically placed TV.

She has a website which had a clear gentle-discipline policy posted, and that promotes learning. She says that she has her ECE and teaches the kids the alphabet, their numbers, and uses a map of the world to teach them their countries.

There is a contract, and for a deposit she would “hold” the space for me.

One baby, one full time kid and several part time kids.

The daycare is relatively new, and has only had one inspection since being licensed, which came up with the following violations:

Code Category/Description
203 Hygiene & Communicable Disease Control
“Sanitation or housekeeping” does not meet requirements.
204 Physical Facility, Equipment & Furnishings
“Storage practices of hazardous materials” does not meet requirements.

I liked:

Friendly, warm lady who gushed over Babby and whisked him over to the kids to say “look who will be coming!” She held him the whole time and took him around the room to investigate everything he pointed at.

Formal anti-hitting discipline policy.

I didn’t like:

Not only do they get TV, they get it twice a day – during snack time. The lady informed me that that was “all” because too much TV wasn’t good for them and she liked to teach them. Unfortunately, twice a day is still two times more often than I am comfortable with. Not so much for the kids, but the fact that the baby was sitting there staring at it too bothered me.

She was very pushy – she tried to get me to hand her a deposit to hold the space for her. Since I was still all like “oh hell no” about the TV, I politely declined, saying I would call if I wanted the space held.

She was more negative about the cloth diapers than the first two workers. Like them, she had very much a “but WHY?” attitude, but while they had seemed to shrug it off once I assured them that there would be no extra work involved, she seemed less comfortable with the idea.

I was disappointed by this daycare, because I had found the website very promising. I am also finding it very stressful to meet and connect with all of these women, knowing that I will end up rejecting most of them. I hate this sort of thing – meet them, talk to them, make friends, and then either never fulfill my promise to call them, or call and formally reject them. I hate having to pick someone, and I hate that I have to let the majority of these nice people down.

—

So it was with a heavy heart that I headed out to Daycare 4, which I had found by a fluke. It wasn’t listed on Daycarebear or godaycare, but its location near me caught my eye and a quick Google search with the name in quotation marks turned up a simple webpage with very little information. It styled itself as an eco-friendly “green” daycare, so I figured that this would be at least once place that might accept cloth diapering.

When I called, though, I wasn’t encouraged. I had to repeat “cloth diaper” over the phone multiple times before she could understand what I was saying, and then she said that they used disposables, that by licensing standards she couldn’t put them in cloth. I explained that I would bring my own and take them away and have them washed independantly, and she had said that THAT would probably be doable. I didn’t feel encouraged, though.

The problem with talking to these daycare ladies over the phone has been the fact that all of them have been Iranian. If you know anyone from the Middle East or India, you know that their accent and manner of speech is often clipped and hurried, and over the phone especially it often comes across as abrupt or rude by English-speaking standards.

I had been put-off by the phone manners of all of these women, but charmed by their real life counterparts.

So I went to go see the “Green” daycare.

Daycare 4

Distance: Near Daycare one – so about a four minute drive.

Caretakers: One, a middle-aged lady with two young girls who make up some of her daycare space complement. She is Persian (like all of them – is this a cultural thing, this Persian-daycare thing?) but in person her English is excellent. She is a nurse who decided to start a daycare when she realized that it would cost over $2000 dollars a month to put her two kids in care while she worked. She was friendly, chatty, and clearly takes pride in her work. She said she might be getting help in the future so she could have a few more slots open up.

Details: Rates are negotiable but trend at $880-900/month for full time care, lunch and snacks included. There are currently five children attending, including her own two, one of whom will be going to school in the fall. Her own children are 5 and 8, there is a 16 month old, a 22 month old, and another toddler (I didn’t quite catch the age) who comes part time. This means that the daycare is quite full, and she isn’t even positive about whether she will have a space in September. She says she needs to talk to the licensing board – with one of her kids going to school, and one of the babies turning two, she thinks she will be able to take another baby but she isn’t sure.

The children are allowed free run of the house (supervised) but there is a play room, a back yard, and a kitchen attached to the play room. The lunch menus are posted on the wall, and they included a variety of cultural foods, such as chicken curry, black bean burrito, and sockeye salmon roll. She told me that the food is organic whenever possible and that none of it is pre-packaged. She enjoys cooking and likes to prepare meals from scratch. She doesn’t believe in serving juice – she serves milk or water, but she has taken to making mango fruit smoothies for them occasionally as a snack.

Everything was very clean, but she told me that she only used natural cleaning products – no chemicals.

I liked:

Practically everything.

The lady was friendly, outgoing, and exuded competence.

She not only had a cork board filled with policies, weekly menus and such, but she also had a beautifully bound policy manual, printed in colour with clip art images (which her 5 year old daughter insisted on describing to me in detail: “This is a man. This is a woman. This is a doctor. This is a flower and it’s growing in dirt. This is mommy’s Allah-book. This is mommy.”) and it covers EVERYTHING. It is like she sat down and thought of everything under the sun that could possibly be related to child care and put it in that manual. When I managed to tune out the five year old, I spotted a policy on custody papers in the case of divorced parents, a policy on reporting suspected physical or sexual abuse and what constituted each, and an informational section on poisonous bug bites.

She offered to email me a copy so I could read it more thoroughly.

They don’t watch tv.

“His father” she pointed at the 16 month old “doesn’t want him watching TV, so we don’t watch TV. My kids do sometimes, because they’re older, but I get them to go upstairs, and actually since we don’t watch it down here, my own kids often go the whole day without asking to watch any at all.”

She LOVED my cloth diapers. She had never heard of a diaper service and thought it was a great idea. She was amazed at the price, saying that she thought it was still cheaper than disposables, and loved how eco-friendly it was.

She is familiar with baby sign language since both of the toddlers use it at home. “It’s great, the parents showed me the signs, and it’s amazing. They communicate with me, and they’re just babies! I love it!”

She also speaks in Farsi to the children occasionally “because it is good for them to learn other languages.”  I wish it were French, since that’s a national language here, but I agree with her that any language is good, and PH himself is learning a lot of Farsi, since he works in a Persian-heavy area (my area isn’t very heavily Persian at all, but apparently only Persians run day care here. Odd).

There have been no violations, but to be fair, there have been no inspections. She was just licensed less than a year ago.

This woman came across as so competent that I felt like I was inadequate by comparison, and that Babby would actually be better off with her than with me! I didn’t feel that there was a language barrier or a clash of priorities and expectations. I felt like we were on the same page. And she liked me, too, I could tell, mostly because I was patient with her obstreperous five year old.

I didn’t like:

She may not have space for me, and even if she does, she is going to need a committment from me, because her slot could fill up fast. I don’t know where I’ll be working or what my shifts will be, and she hit the nail on the head when she asked “So what if you don’t find a job in September?”

I could tell that she would take me in a heart beat if she could and if I could commit. But I’m worried that I may not find a job fast enough, even if she DOES have a spot open up.

(I’ve been job searching and job searching, but the only vets that are advertising are a) far away from me – an hour’s drive, almost – and b) vets who turned me down last year because of my pregnancy.

I plan on taking my resume around to every vet in the area in the hopes that some of them just aren’t advertising well.

But I’m scared. I need a job, and if I don’t find it fast I’m going to lose the best day care I have seen yet.)

Also, that five year old of hers was really something else. She started screaming when she saw me, “NO STRANGERS! I DON’T LIKE VISITORS NOOOOOOO!” and she hid in her room. Presently she came out and climbed all over her mother while her mother was trying to talk to me, insisting that her mother put her hair up in ribbons and then breaking into screams of rage when it didn’t meet her exacting standards. The mother was clearly frustrated with her and embarassed.

“I don’t know why she gets like this,” she told me, physically holding down the arms of the child, who had been flailing angrily at the approaching 16 month old, “she acts out for strangers lately.”

“She isn’t like this normally,” said the 8 year old seriously, shaking her head at her sister, “I don’t know what gets into her.”

On the one hand, I wasn’t impressed by her kid’s manners. On the other hand, it’s hard to judge someone based on the misbehaviour of their kid, because ALL kids misbehave occasionally and it often is calculated for the maximum embarrassment of the parent.

Also, at least she didn’t slap the kid or threaten her, although she also didn’t impose a time out or any other consequence other than speaking sternly and occasionally physically removing the child from a lap/from the other children.

Since I don’t have an obstreperous five year old, I’m not entirely sure what to make of that experience.

Daycare? I call it SCAREcare.

17 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Me vs The Sad

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

anxiety, babies, child care, daycare, employment, GAD, jobs

My anxiety levels are through the roof.

I had a lot of anxiety while on vacation and I’m still having it now that I’m back. I don’t know if it’s generally because I’m coming to the end of my maternity leave or what, but today it is DEFINITELY because I’m coming to the end of my mat leave.

I started calling daycares today.

I’ve been putting this off for forever because I just HATE the fact that I even have to put him in daycare at all. In my mind, the person I am leaving him with is immensely fat, sits on a couch all day smoking like a chimney, and hollers,

“Shuttup, I’m watching my STORIES!”

All while my baby crawls around at her feet, sobbing, with his feet entwined by loose electrical cables.

I know what I want to a certain extent:

  • I want a home-based, licensed facility. I don’t want a big centre because a) they are more expensive and b) Psychologists are actually concerned about disruption to attachments in babies attending those facilities. They’re fine for bigger kids, but for babies they’re a little too impersonal – too much staff turnover, too different from home etc. On the other hand, a kid DIED in an unlicensed facility just down the road from me and now there is a police investigation.
  • I want a caretaker that I can trust and who can serve as Babby’s other attachment figure, the way a grandmother or an aunt would in a simpler society.
  • I want someone who is flexible, because I may have to drop Babby off or pick Babby up before/after the traditional 7-5, depending on my work schedule (most vet clinic shifts are either 7 am-2pm or 2pm-8pm). Not to mention that I have no idea what days I’ll be working, or where I’ll be working.
  • I want someone who is relatively nearby, since I have no idea what direction I’ll be working in.

This last one seems to be what concerns the daycare ladies the most. One lady, when I asked if she had any spaces for September, snapped,

“Where do you live?”

I described my general location.

“You’re too far from me. I’m in [she named another city that I live on the border of]. I know a daycare closer to you that has a space.” She gave me the contact info and rung off.

Another lady was more laid back about it.

“I’m quite a drive from you, but if you don’t mind travelling…” According to her address, she was only about 10 minutes away.

My initial search for licensed daycares consisted of a 5 km span around my postal code. I’m beginning to realize that this search was too broad, but I don’t know how to narrow it down. The government website that gave me the list seems to have inexplicably quit working.

I have two appointments on Monday to meet with potential daycare providers – both Persian, judging by their names, and both “quite a drive” from me, according to them – but I looked them up on the Fraser Health website and both of them have repeated violations under the inspection list. I don’t know how normal that is.

So, to sum up:

  • I don’t know where I’m going to be working
  • I don’t know what my hours will be
  • I don’t know how to narrow down my 11 page list of potential daycare providers, given that many of them will consider themselves prohibitively far from me
  • I don’t know if I will find someone I like
  • I don’t know if I will find someone who likes me (somehow the “I don’t know what days/hours I need, I use cloth diapers, and sign language with my baby” spiel may not sell me all that well).
  • I don’t know if they will be trustworthy with my baby.
  • I feel pressured to make a decision quite quickly lest I lose a space, but am afraid of making  a decision TOO quickly and settling with someone I’m not comfortable with.
  • I don’t flipping even want to go back to work at all. I want to stay with my baby.
Help.

"Oh boy, Mommy's going to leave me with a neglectful weirdo!"

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