Childcare : There's No Place Like Home ? (Childcare in general)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Childcare in general
Date:	20/01/01 (242 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: important for your child's development and safety, lots of alternatives to choose from

Disadvantages: can be hard to decide on childcare arrangements, can be expensive

Hi! I'm the mother of four perfect children, all walking by nine months, all potty trained by their second birthday, all able to read and write by three. Huh!! No way! We all know this is a fantasy, things are never that easy and each child is an individual.

Yes, I do have four children, three girls and a boy, currently aged aklmost 13, 11, 10 and 7 years old. They are all now at full-time school (Hurray!), but before that, I had various experiences of childcare.

My first three children all went to a private Nursery school from the age of around two. This was incredibly expensive, but I had a discounted rate through working there myself. This was ideal really, as I wouldn't be actually teaching them, but I was on hand if need be.

I wish this kind of teaching was available to everyone for free. It was costing around £3 an hour per child and being private, the nursery was open from 8am til 6pm.

While I know some parents have to work or choose to work, it did upset me slightly that a few of the children - usually toddlers - would be at nursery five days a week, for these ten hours.

Some children would arrive asleep, we would give them their three meals, change their nappies, look after them completely - then Mum or Dad would turn up at 6pm, ready to take Sleepy Child home to bed! That's not what I call parenting - but that's another rant!

This nursery meant that my two brightest children (whether by nature or nurture) could read and write well by the time they started school. They even had French lessons at that age too, which is actually a great age to teach them foreign languages, as they are very receptive, due to them being in the midst of learning their own language at this time.

My son has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and dyslexia, and my youngest daughter has ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) and some autistic traits. This meant their educational requirements w
ere slightly different.

My son coped with nursery, but did not do as well as his sisters. He went through a few years of proving rather a challenge to the school system, but now he has started High School, he seems much better behaved.

But I would like to concentrate on my youngest, as this is my most recent experience of childcare problems and probably the most relevant to this opinion.

When she was a baby, we moved out of the area, so I stopped working at Nursery and became a full-time stay-at-home mother (SAHM).

This worked for a while, but then my marriage broke up and I was a single mother for a year or so. As my youngest was, and is, a demanding child, my Dad paid for her to go to a childminder once a week, to coincide with school hours. This gave me a chance to do my shopping, go to the Doctors / Dentists, do my housework and so on.

We chose the particular childminder because we knew her - her daughter was friends with my eldest - and had seen her reacting to the children regularly. We knew she was dependable, calm, able to cope in a crisis and had a good way with the children.

After talking to her about minding my daughter, visiting her house and watching how she interacted with her, the arrangement began and I was very happy with her.

When I eventually moved to another city, to be with my current partner, his mother offered to have my daughter once a week, to continue this chance for me to have a break.

I could hardly fault the childminder, but my mother-in-law (as she now is) was even better. She only had the one child to deal with, unlike the childminder, and she enjoyed taking her to the zoo or buying her clothes, etc. - something that is out of the childminder's job description!

When my daughter became old enough to go to playschool, she started there. She was okay for a term, although I wouldn't say she loved it, then the owner changed and with it, the whole fee
l of the place altered.

My daughter began having "sit down strikes", refusing to move off the pavement, as she did not want to go to playschool. I went and stayed there with her a few times and understood her change of mind.

It had been a warm, friendly, relaxed and happy place, where the children could learn through play and enjoy the experience. But the new woman had come in from a teaching background and it had become stricter, with less room for adaptability, more rules and guidelines.

If we arrived at 8:50am, even if it was pouring with rain, we had to wait outside until 9am, because that was how things were done now. Little things like that. But the tone of the playschool had changed, and not for the better.

I spent days wondering what to do, knowing that was the only playschool near enough for me to take her to, as I don't drive and have fears of travelling on buses.

I listened to conflicting ideas, to people's experiences and views, but of course, deep down, you know the best thing to do for your child. I took her out of the playschool, leaving her just under a year to go before she started primary school.

I felt I could not teach her in the way the others had been taught, as she only absorbs certain things if they are taught in a specific way. But I also knew I wanted to give her a head start before school and not just let her learn the basics from then onwards.

So I did some research on the Internet and looked through some websites designed for parents who homeschool their children. Of course, these are primarily for and by Americans, but you can adapt them, changing the spellings and so on, as necessary.

I printed up flashcards of coloured circles, to teach her the colours. I cut these out, then laminated them by covering them in sticky-backed plastic, which protects them from spilled juice or temper tantrums! I did this for shapes and letters of the alphabet too.



I printed up colouring sheets which I added into her day, to provide some light relief from the "learning". I also printed out handwriting sheets, which she could write over, trying to work on her letters.

Of course, I didn't do this with her every day. We went out to the park, she helped me round the house, we read stories, watched television and she still went to my mother-in-law's house once a week. But it helped.

I am not very creative with my hands, but I even designed a simple calendar. I used a large hard-backed envelope, then made little pockets on it out of see-through A4 wallets, stapled or selotaped on. I printed up the names of the days and the months, as well as numbers for the date, plus pictures for the weather and the seasons.

These were arranged on the envelope and each day, we decided which was correct. Usually I would do the date and she would choose the weather. She thought this was great and I was really pleased I had managed to create something that actually worked!

She started school in September 2000 and then, of course, she began doing the real learning and loved it. Each day in Reception, she'd come home saying she had learnt another letter or could sound out another word.

It is a joy to watch your child discover something new. It feels especially good, if you know you have helped with that process.

Whatever childcare works for you - being a SAHM, another family member looking after your child, a playschool, nursery, childminder or nanny - is the right one. Just use your common sense, trust your maternal instincts and be prepared to be flexible. What works for one child will not necessarily be right for the next one. Good luck!

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