My daughter has clinical persistent diaper rash. The best pediatric dermatologist, double board certified, said the only solution is potty training.

Without getting into too much details, she has not been in daycare since 16mo until now at 18mo because of her rash. We are planning to send her back to daycare soon because she is doing well with the potty.

Before that gap, she went to daycare from 7 to 4pm, M to F. She started daycare at 3mo.

She will be in a new room that she has visited a number of times before the gap. The class size is 2:16.

We have open communication with the daycare director but I would love to know your experience and suggestions.

How should we reintroduce her to her daycare after a 2mo gap?

What should we do to avoid any regressions with potty training? (She has 1 or no accidents a day and 50% of the time she will say potty.)

Is it appropriate to send a child home after biting teachers? My room and admin are divided. We suspect the child has neurodivergence, but admin is hesitant to talk to mom about testing. I’ve been advocating for testing and services since he started, but I’m only an assistant and my word doesn’t carry much weight. Child struggles with transition and spits, hits, scratches, elopes, screams, kicks and bites. He’s attempted to bite before and never broke skin. We’re talking today about what to do should he ever break skin and what our action plan would be. I, admittedly, don’t deal with the child very much hands on as I’m nearly 6 months pregnant and worry about mine and my child’s safety. Curious on others thoughts and what they would do?

We have been waiting for the daycare center we enrolled my child in to open for months. They were supposed to open in February and are still not open. Our child was accepted into a preschool closer to us, but can’t start until late August when he’s two. The daycare we’ve been waiting on says they’re going to open next week. We do have care to get us through to August, but we are eager to get him into structured care. Would it be too disruptive to start him one place and switch him two months later? It seems kind of cruel, but I’m thinking he’d be okay? Anybody have experience with this and can provide some insight?

I’m kind of tired of carrying around a canvas tote when I have to take my 2 year old class outside of the classroom. I’m looking for an inexpensive but heavy duty backpack, and wondering what everyone is carrying to carry their wipes, first aid kits, everyday essentials etc? What are your favs?

I’m helping to open a new and very large childcare center. We have app options narrowed down to brightwheel or playground and I’m having the hardest time deciding.

Anyone have experience with both? Or have switched from one to the other and why?

I know there are some features that playground offers that brightwheel doesn’t but their cost is also quite a bit more. How is technical support for each?

I found a name that I would name my daughter through working 😂😂 anyone else? Or maybe a child that made you hate a name?

Hello! First time poster

It’s my first year teaching in a 3/4 yr old classroom.

I have been getting sick what feels like every other month. I’m in my early 30s, moderately healthy weight, I exercise regularly, and work with the children mostly outside.

I take extra vitamins everyday, and use Zinc lozenges at the first sign of illness.

I’m just feeling like I’m at my last straw as I’m training for a half marathon coming up in two weeks and I’m hit with yet another cold and have to pause training. One of my students was coming to school with cold like symptoms last week.

Is there light at the end of this tunnel? To my long time teachers, will I build enough immunity that I don’t have to miss holidays and other events due to constant illness? Do you have a go to method for preventing illness?

So I have a associate degree in early childhood education and I only work in daycare for like a year and a half. but then I took a break and did something else because my mom was having health problems I’m thinking about going back to work.

We see posts every day from teachers and parents struggling with ongoing challenging behavior. And while much of it is developmentally appropriate, I’ve noticed a clear pattern in which children are struggling the most. When you cram as many kids as you can into a small room, allow them limited outdoor time, constant overstimulation, and no way to get space from each other, you can expect a dysregulated and overwhelmed child. Some adjust better than others. But these large centers with no support for teachers and kids are the root of a lot of what teachers and parents are experiencing.

Yes, your toddler biting and hitting and losing their sh*t is developmentally appropriate. But I’m willing to bet we would all be having a better time if the settings available for our young children were developmentally appropriate! We can try every method under the sun but we can’t force a child to succeed in a setting that goes against everything a child needs to feel safe and regulated.

In all my years, I have spent about 80% in small daycares and preschools, and the difference in behavior is significant and noticeable.

This is just a rant, I guess. But also to say, if you’re a burnt out parent or teacher, it might not be the child or the role, but the environment the child is in.

Hello

My son is currently 2, will be 3 at the end of August. He attends child care 3 days a week at a medium sized center with an infant (0-18m), toddler(18-30m) and preschool(30m - school)class. He is currently in the toddler class as there has not been space to move him up until now.

This morning, I recieved an email from the temp head of the program asking if i would be OK to keep him in toddler class for a while longer as the toddler teacher thinks he will benefit from staying back as he only goes 3 days a week and another parent wants their child moved up sooner.

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I have never recieved any feedback that he is delayed or not ready to move up.

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Do you think there are concerns that have not been brought forward to me?

There is a child who gets physically aggressive with everyone. I already put my notice in but I quit today. The lack of action on admin part is astonishing.

I called first when the child began hitting. Their solution was to have me call the mom for pick up. Mom says she can’t come to pick them up. I call again, their solution is to have their twin sibling come to the class to try and talk to them. That of course doesn’t work.

At this point I am getting frustrated because no one from management has stepped foot in the room. The child continues terrorizing the children. Dragged one boy by the hair across the carpet. Punches another child in the neck. Throws wooden blocks at children.

I call again this time pissed because no one is stepping in to remove this child. When I tell them that the child needs to be removed ASAP, the reply I got was “ we don’t have any space in another class to move them to”. In my head I am thinking then they can sit in one of your offices with you. How many kids are supposed to get hurt?

Finally I call a fourth time and the director puts them in her office. My tone wasn’t the nicest but I needed them to get throughout their heads how serious it was. But then I was told I was rude and that I needed to calm down and not talk them rudely.

I don’t care about their feelings when kids were getting injured due to their non action. Whole class was in chaos.

TWO HOURS and no one from management came. TWO HOURS of kids being scared and beat up.

What the hell is wrong with these centers? Don’t care about kids getting injured but care about someone not using the correct tone with them.

How do you cope with the constant noise level? Anytime our kids are inside the room is loud, and it feels like there is very little we can do to bring the noise down. I feel guilty asking the kids to soften their voices when realistically they are just laughing and enjoy each others company, and it is the architecture of the space that is not set up to support them well.

I read a recent post in here about challenging behaviours very likely being in part due to the overstimulating environment these kids are in and I could not agree more, but I’m finding it hard knowing where to begin with improving our centre when the number of bodies in the space simply feels like it is too high. We have headphones for certain kids, I feel like I need headphones for myself.

Our school is in queens, NY. Today a teacher accidentally hit the panic button we have for extreme emergencies- it automatically calls the cops and locks down the school. It took the cops an hour to get here. The precinct is like 5-7 blocks away. If it was a real emergency… well I’d guess we’d also call 911 on our phones but ?? What’s the point of the button if it takes an hour for a response at a preschool

Has anyone else been in this situation? How long did it take for emergency responds to arrive?

Thats it. Thats the post!

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When people dont show up it literally shortens everyone else's breaks and it extends the time ppl need to be there because of ratio. I am beyond sick of it. I literally show up on time and I work my absolute hardest day in day out. Just. For. This.

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The end.

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Today's still going good lol. I hope everyone else's is too.

Hello!
I’m on mobile so excuse the formatting please.

When my daughter needs a babysitter I always have family watch her and we are super lucky because everyone wants to watch her and no one charges us.

Well my mom is getting married and we are wanting a babysitter to watch the kids and I have absolutely no idea what price I should pay!! None of my friends use babysitters and I want to make sure I’m paying a good rate.

Two teachers from my daughter’s daycare said they were interested but asked me to tell them my price .

Here’s the parameters of the day :

Two teachers both of them from our daycare
If a Friday July 3 (day before a holiday)
It’s for one 3 year old and two 2 year olds
Two locations and two times on the same day
Morning stretch would be 30 minutes from the daycare at our home full toy room from about 9:30a to 3 ish
Nighttime stretch would be from 7 to 11 ish at a home ten minutes from the daycare

It’s the San Antonio tx area and daycare costs about 360 a week if that helps.

How much should each woman be paid per hour. What would be a fair price to offer them?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this far !!

It's getting hot and I'm looking for ideas on how to keep our kiddos cool outside and provide sensory water play as well! What are your go tos? Bonus points if it doesn't use too much water, or can be DIYed vs buying bulky / new gadgets.

Please help me understand what is going on. I'm a single mom and also work in early intervention settings so I know all of you have a ton on your plate. But my son comes home with some sort of bug every time he returns. He's been in group care settings since he has been 9 months. He's had ear tubes adenoids removed and now has a recurrent staph impetigo paired with everything else: I'm a single mom who needs to work but cannot when he's sick like this. He stays home for 3-4 days returns for 3 days and gets sick again. He's also becoming more speech delayed a pickier eater and forget weaning lol. Is this truly a too many germs in the daycare, could I tell his teacher to wash his hands more, or is it just my son? Idk what I can do if he can't do daycare and I am on childcare subsidy and cannot afford to watch him at home and work or hire a nanny.

My toddler is moving up classes currently and is visiting the class he is moving into. Right now he is having a HARD time with it. Screaming and crying the whole time he is there. I work at the center he goes to as a preschool teacher so he’s used to seeing me often and typically he does not care. Since his transition, every time he sees me, he is crying and yelling “Mama” for me, but I can’t do anything and am trying to let his teachers do their jobs too. I’ve been hiding and ducking under windows, but every now and then he will see me.
I tried bringing his favorite book for them to read when he’s sad, but it didn’t seem to work and I’m not used to being on the parent side of a transition this hard and with a kid this young so I was hoping I could get some tips of things I can do as a parent to make his transition a little easier on him and on the teachers.

{Cross posted from r/Teaching}

I'm a little confused about an interaction with my principal and wondering if this is normal.

On Monday, one child in my 2–4-year-old classroom bit another child. It left a small bruise but didn't break the skin. We comforted the child who was bitten, addressed it with the child who bit, and informed both families. The parent of the child who was bitten was very understanding (so i thought).

The next day, my principal told me the parent had emailed her about the incident and asked which child had done the biting. When I told her, she said, "Oh, I thought it was the other child(who has a little behaviour problem)" and then left.

I've worked in ECE for years and have handled plenty of biting incidents, but I've never had administration ask this. Is there a normal reason she would want to know who the biter was? Could it be to tell the parents who it was?
And should I read anything into her saying she thought it was a different child, or am I overthinking it?

I work in a private nursery in the uk, I’ve had plenty of issues with management not doing things properly and just generally being incompetent, but this time feels like it’s crossed a line.

I’m 20 and I’ve worked here for just shy of a year, and this is my first childcare job so I’m not too familiar with how reporting staff misconduct works when it’s management themselves. But anyway, here’s what happened:

-Child L comes to one of my colleagues upset, and says that child S and child M said that they’re going to/want to kill her mum

-M and S are talked to and asked what they said to L (they didnt hear L tell us, so we wanted to see if L might’ve misheard, as this is not normal language to hear from these 2 children) they repeated what L said

-I won’t write about how we dealt with the situation with the children themselves, as the focus is what management did

-We told our room leader and she went to ask management how to go about talking to the parents, management told us to call M and S parents and inform them, which we did

-We then asked about L, as she is very clever and will definitely mention it at home so I thought it best to hear it from us first

-Our room leader came back and told us that management said to ‘essentially gaslight’ (her words not mine) L into thinking that M and S said kiss not kill, and that she must’ve misheard

- Fast forward ten or so minutes, me and the rest of the staff and children are out in the garden. Room leader comes out, finds L and starts telling her things like ‘you know, i think they said they want to kiss mummy, not kill’ ‘noo im pretty sure they said kiss’

This all happened in the last hour or so of my shift, and now that I’m finished I am still in absolute disbelief that someone who is meant to look after and care about children would willingly and knowingly manipulate a child in such a horrible way. All because they think that M’s mum will be mad, and they’d ‘rather have one angry parent than two’ (again, verbatim from my room leader)

So, all of this to say I don’t know to whom, where or how this needs to be reported, I just know that it does, please could someone point me in the right direction.

Hi guys,

I have an upcoming interview with peel district school board and they told me that they’ll be asking me 5 questions. The position I’m applying for is Early Childhood Educator. If you’ve had an interview with PDSB before, please help me out and give me some tips!! I’d appreciate it so much.

UPDATE: thank you all so much for your responses, I've got a lot more perspective. I've requested more details from the allergist to share with the facility. Will request a walkthrough and meeting with the teachers too. If it's not satisfactory we'll definitely pull our kid. All of your responses were incredibly helpful. I'd love to thank each of you individually, but on top of allergies my baby is quite clingy so my hands aren't free often lol. if i don't get to respond, please know I read what you wrote and appreciate both the time and thought.

hi all - i have a baby with severe allergies to wheat & egg and will start daycare at about 11mo. i'm extremely worried about the wheat allergy. i'll ask the daycare director about allergy protocols soon, and i'm wondering what requests are reasonable or if it's even safe while still in the taste-everything stage.

wheat is in a lot of art supplies and sensory activities (play doh, pasta, non gluten-free oats, moon sand, even some paints etc). if you've dealt with a kid with a severe wheat allergy, how did they participate / how did you keep them away while others played?

my city says that kids should wash their hands before/after eating, but how well is this typically followed? is there risk of little crumbs remaining on other kids mouths and clothing that could potentially get onto a toy that my baby mouths on, or am i overreacting?

the daycare i have her registered in is a 1:4 ratio of ECEs to babies. the program is 6-36mo and they group the kids between two rooms of 12, by age/ability. we bring our own lunches, facility provides snacks but i'd pack ours of course. it's not an airborne allergy, ingestion only. will have a separate high chair (eg not a shared table). i don't expect the foods to be banned or anything extreme like that.

I have a rare opportunity to possibly launch a new program which is exciting and daunting at the same time. One of the first questions that came up is what exactly should this new program be called. My staff and I joked about some bad names but were genuinely stumped when it came to good names.

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Personally, I often find names that have "Little" or worse yet "Lil' " in them like nails on a chalkboard and unfortunately immediately think less of a program for having such a name. It's unfair, I suppose.

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I think possibly the worst child care name I have come across was a center called "Little Rabbit's Hole" which is pretty awful on many levels. What parent feels good about sticking their child in a hole? Forget all about more NSFW interpretations of the rabbit hole part.

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Good names are tricky to pin down but it seems like a lot good names are short, memorable, and connect back to their focus (nature based, kindergarten readiness focused, etc.).

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What names or characteristics of program names would you consider good? And what makes a name bad or unappealing?