It sounds like you are dealing with your little ones by trying to entertain them. You are absolutely right that you can only do so much of these things. Perhaps it might help to focus on *including* rather than entertaining. Include them in the basic tasks of running the household. Even a toddler can “help” with cleaning cooking. You need to break the task down into very simple instructions. Say something like “Pick up all the blocks and put them in this basket.” Small children can “fluff” the pillow (although it may look more like wrestling) while someone bigger makes the bed. If you give them child-sized brooms or mops, they don’t actually clean anything at first but will probably be quite happy to feel like they are. Have them count along when you are measuring ingredients for cooking and give them a turn stirring.
Of course, they are not really helping, in the sense of making the childcare jobs any easier. If you start including them in cleaning when they are toddlers, they aren’t likely to be of real assistance until around age 4 or 5. There is no question in my mind that this is the harder way to do things (in the short run). The more small children there are, the harder it is to include them in cleaning and cooking. However, in the long run, it produces children who assume that keeping the household running is the job of everybody that lives there.
We have a couple of girls here in our neighborhood who are 12 and 13 that baby sit. One has been through the baby sitting class and is quite good from what I hear. I don’t use her because my DD doesn’t like her. (lol I am afraid that if I ever hired her, it would turn into a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip around here. Remember the ones where Calvin locked the sitter out of the house?) The sitters that I do use are 14 year olds that I have worked with at the community theater. My children both love them to pieces! I think that has to weigh in heavily on which sitter you pick too. I also have a 15 year old boy on my sitter list. Again the kids think he is the bee’s knees. And he is great with them. He will wrestle and rough house, or kick a soccer ball around in the yard, but at the same time I have seen him sit on the floor and tie my son’s shoes. The whole time he was asking if they were too tight, and showing Andy how he was tieing them. (It was just far too cute to sit and watch!)
Our Youth Group has an annual slave day at the church. Actually we’ve changed the name to rent-a-kid. We have members of the congregation sign-up with chores they need done, or babysitting jobs, or errands to run, whatever. Then the members of the youth group are assigned childcare jobs to do one Saturday (or whatever day hire-er needs) and are paid in a donation. The money gets split evenly between all who work because some people may pay like $75 for a car wash just because it’s for a youth group kid while another person may pay just $20 to have all their windows washed.
Here are just a few of the despicable practices I have witnessed over during the course of mychildcare job with the company: 1. allowing abusive caregivers to continue working after receiving several reports from other staff members who have witnessed the abuse. Most times, these caregivers are never given any written or verbal warnings of the witnessed abuse. Staff members working alongside these abusers are instructed to “keep an eye” on these people, thus creating a hostile working environment for them. Administration has been known to “stick up” for the caregivers in question, saying things like “I could never imagine ‘So and so’ acting inappropriately toward the children.”, or “‘So and so’ has been with the company for years and we’ve never heard of this before.” or some other excuse. Most of the time, the staff members who are witnessing the abuse either resign for moral reasons, or are reassigned to another position in a different classroom.
What is welfare for? Welfare is not intended to take care of people who have the wherewithal to provide for themselves. t is not designed to maintain your current style of living. Welfare is not designed to keep you alive. Welfare is designed to keep you from dying while trying to do better for yourself period.
As a child-care provider, I would not have a problem being video-taped, but only if I were informed that it might be happening. I would be very uncomfortable if I were to find out later that it had happened and lose my respect and trust for my employer and probably leave the position that may have otherwise been a good match for each of us.
Child care providers want the Government to change the Employment Relations Bill – and National has promised to fight to get them excluded from the Bill, Opposition Industrial Relations spokesperson Max Bradford said today. ”Providers of home based child care are calling on the Government to exclude them from the dependent contractor provisions in the Bill. “But so far the Government has turned a deaf ear. National will ensure the Government gets the message of concern. ”We are getting extensive feedback from our 40,000 plus mail out of a flyer on the Employment Relations Bill and it isn’t only small business who is worried about the impact on their livelihoods.
Low wages and a lack of benefits have a direct effect on the quality of childcare jobs, in part through the resulting high turnover of child care workers. With support from the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, IWPR will conduct an analysis of current state strategies to raise child care workers’ wages. Led by Study Director Stacie Golin, IWPR will collect information on a wide range of state and local programs currently being implemented to raise the wages of child care workers, thus reducing turnover and raising the quality of care.
There are plans for childcare jobs. Full employment doesn’t mean that there is an unemployment rate of 0 per cent. It means that there is no permanent, structural unemployment. Companies will still close or shrink while other open or expand in a full employment economy. Workers will still leave one job and look for another for a variety of good reasons, and that will often involve an adjustment period without work, eased by unemployment insurance.
Finding nannies in the country is a hit and miss affair. Anyone can call themself a nanny, whether qualified or not, if they look after children in their own home. Some nannies are excellent, committed and professional. Others may be drop-outs from childcare courses, or girls with no real idea what they want to do with their lives. We may have a national nanny register eventually, but until then you must rely on reputable agencies - look up local ones when you arrive – and your own judgment. *Always* follow up references yourself by telephone – agencies are supposed to do this but don’t always. See prospective nannies a couple of times, and see how they relate to your children before you decide. Personally, I would avoid using a very young nanny for sole charge duties. A young woman straight from college has no real idea what it can be like to be with children all day, and may be less able to find support networks for herself. A woman of 25 or so will be more together, more experienced in life and more resourceful.
