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Koivunen posted:Picture day at daycare is tomorrow, it will be my son’s first “real” picture. Today he tripped and landed on his face, so he’s got a big fat upper lip now. Because of course. Ah yes, my son is devoted to this practice as well. Literally any time we have a family picture planned, time to keep him away from corners and slippery surfaces.
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Jan 12, 2023 16:59
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theres nothing kids like more than getting sick or hurt and their favorite time to do it is right before picture day
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Jan 12, 2023 17:05
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Apparently the best way to entertain a 3 year old is to pull a box of their infant toys from storage
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Jan 12, 2023 18:03
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My son decided he wanted to rub his head on the carpet 3 days before picture day, and as a result he had a rugburn/scab on his head for pictures. He never did it before and never did it again. It was the weirdest thing. My daughter is the best picture taker. She's a wild child normally but when we tell her we're taking pictures she will pose, she will smile, she'll do everything on command. Now I just need to trick her into thinking we're always taking pictures...
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Jan 12, 2023 18:21
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nachos posted:Apparently the best way to entertain a 3 year old is to pull a box of their infant toys from storage I kept all the good toys from when I was a kid. The legos are already out and have been for years, but I’ll occasionally get out the micro machines, Star Wars action fleet, etc and they are great to get them to play in the basement for a good hour or more. Last weekend they played with the army micro machines for a good three hours at least. I also just hooked up the modded Wii, they are all finally old enough to start playing some of the games. Thankfully the hard drive with 60+ games on it hasn’t crapped out after sitting in a box for seven+ years.
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Jan 12, 2023 18:31
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lobster shirt posted:theres nothing kids like more than getting sick or hurt and their favorite time to do it is right before picture day Our toddler missed her first picture day last May after she gave us covid for mother's day.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:38
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My husband gave himself a haircut the day before his kindergarten photos.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:52
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Last year my preschooler's photos were adorable! She had a lot of fun and really hammed it up for the camera. She still enjoys looking at the pictures (and the digital download included a transparent background so I was able to insert her into all sorts of silly things to make her laugh.) This year she told the photographer no thank you, I don't want my picture taken today.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:29
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TWO successful potty pees today. We're getting somewhere! Also I got an explanation for why they're "doubled eggs". It's because you take the yolk out, you make more of it with other stuff, and you put it back in. So it's been... Doubled!
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Jan 13, 2023 00:49
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Well that's an interesting development. So our day care is... falling apart? I mean, seems like turnover is pretty high. We haven't had any major issues ourselves, but lots of other parents seem to be fairly upset and have been slowly migrating to other centers. But I keep hearing turnover is super high in this industry right now in general because parents are paying $  but the teacher are getting jack poo poo.But our kids' favorite teacher (who we've had baby sit for us several times) just called us to offer a spot in the in-home preschool that she's opening up in like 2 weeks, and she's already got like 5 other families following her. Has a max capacity of 10 kids. Not sure how I feel about it. Might be better, might be worse. At the cost she's quoting, it'll technically be more expensive by like $100/mo. But we got hit with $200/mo in increases last year so I dunno. Definitely going to have to think about this one. Oldest starts kindergarten next fall, but youngest is a few months shy of 3 so he'll be in day care for 2 more years yet. What sort of questions do you ask in-home day cares? Obviously availability is high on our list. She'll be licensed, but won't get a "star rating" from the state, so there's no real guarantee of quality/education beyond keeping your kids alive. I dunno, seems like a double edge sword. More one-on-one time, possibly more consistency, but the cost is no different and there's potential to be left high and dry if she gets sick or something. I assume she's going to hire help or something? Seems like flying solo is a bad idea, but I dunno how this works.
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Jan 13, 2023 02:52
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Your state will have a max kid to adult ratio. We use an in home daycare that was recommended by friends who also have their kids in the daycare. Currently has two adults for 8 kids with a max of 2 infants I think. They have been running it for at least ten years and do a very good job. Will they provide food? What is the space like? Do they have lots of educational stuff? Toys? Daily schedule? Hours? Pick up/drop off time? Age range? Do you know any other kids? The in home daycare we use is significantly lower cost than local daycare centers by at least 300$/month last we checked. I think we have lucked out with ours but I think in general in home should be cheaper than a center, but it may heavily depend on your local area. If it doesn’t work you can always use it as a stop gap until you find something else. At least you will know the person running it.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:08
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If your current daycare is losing enrollment it seems you could try the in-home option and if it doesn't work out, go back to your current place. It sounds like they would have vacancy.
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Jan 13, 2023 05:38
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DaveSauce posted:[..] There's no way she could handle 10 kids safely by herself so I would assume she's hired a helper. Ask her about contingencies for sickness! Obviously she could try to get temps to cover for her when (not if) she gets sick, but since it's in-home it might still be problematic if she's sick around the house.
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Jan 13, 2023 09:09
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This was my kids first week of daycare, and while its pricey, all things considered I think we got lucky. 3 teachers for a class of 9, though they are all from 1 1/2 to 3 years old. $1000 a month with snacks included, we just provide diapers, wipes, etc. She seems to be acclimating OK, but hasnt napped for a real long time at class. Hoping next week which is her first full week goes OK and we all get some regular sleep.
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Jan 13, 2023 14:54
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So part of why I posted about the day care situation was an unasked question: Is anyone else seeing this with their day care? I mean, the main thing that worries me is the teacher turnover. My understanding is that this is an industry-wide problem, but I don't have much of a basis for that other than that being the line the director gives us when we ask. A quick google shows that this is a fairly widespread problem, but I don't know if we're seeing it worse at our day care or if this is normal. Our 2.5's teachers have stuck around for a bit, but our oldest had both her room's main teachers quit just before Christmas, and that was in addition to some turnover earlier in the year. I think the day care is trying to address it, but they're not doing a great job. They raised tuition twice last year, presumably in an attempt to raise teacher pay, but either that isn't working or it was too little too late for some teachers. And obviously with this teacher leaving and taking several families with her, that's going to put some stress on the day care... going to be a lovely day for the director today (the teacher and the families will be giving notice today... yikes). One thing that stuck with me is that the teacher that's starting the preschool told us that she had 18 kids to take care of, but was getting paid for 2. In other words, her pay was equal to that of the tuition for 2 kids, even though she had 18 in the room to deal with (not alone, but she's the "main teacher" for the room). Which I mean I always understood that they get paid poo poo, but putting the numbers to it really drives the point home. So I guess part of what I'm wondering is if this is typical, or there's something weird going on either in our day care or in our area in general. The county we're in is one of the fastest growing in the country right now, and has been for a few years. So there are some additional complications, and I hesitate to blame it entirely on the day care. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 15:17
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Granted Im new to daycare, but talking to our place, they've raised tuition for next year already in attempt to slow turnover. They've had some turnover but nothing awful. I think my place is paying teachers assistants like $18 an hour and the teachers are getting $25 to start. Not horrible for our area I guess, but not great.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:21
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There are new teachers at our daycare every ... 6-12 months I'd say, with a few lasting longer, and then the main person has been there the whole time. poo poo, her mom is even there now helping with the infants. They are better staffed than they were a year ago, though.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:23
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We saw some turnover in the 3-4's classes during the height of the pandemic, and the late afternoon/evening assistant crew does change every so often, but for the most part the main teachers are the same. A couple retired last year too. Tuition's bugnuts insane, but we appreciate the consistency for real. I went to drop off the toddler in his new 2-2.5 room and the teacher wasn't there yet, so we went to the next class for 2.5-3, and it was the same teacher the older one had. She asked if he remembered her and was "Oh is this your brother??? Wow!"  It was a cute mini-reunion.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:48
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Our daycare has kept their teachers and assistants but I'm pretty certain that it is because they give the staff very discounted (or even free idk) tuition for their own kids. Also the director was a nurse in a management role before she started the daycare and I'm pretty sure she give the teachers career guidance or assistance because "so and so is leaving after five years to take an RN position at (hospital/clinic), we wish them well!" is a recurring theme for teachers who leave.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:20
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Turnover in daycare is extremely common. If you give retail level pay you get retail level turnover. It's not a career, it's a job. Most of the teachers are young, often still in school or fresh out of it, who are trying to break into the industry. The turnover isn't necessarily a bad thing, they're just taking the next step in their careers. My wife had one woman quit, then come back years later as my son's SEIT working for the state. She's great, my son loves her. She was a fantastic teacher and is now a fantastic SEIT. My wife never stops hiring. When she's good on staff, she'll continue hiring because by the time she gets the next hire, someone else will quit. If not, she'll just keep the surplus headcount because she has like 7 callouts a day. She's had the job for almost 3 years now and the only teachers left from when she started have been promoted to administrative roles. The vast majority of the teachers who left aren't getting the same jobs at different daycares, but are doing different things in different places. quote:One thing that stuck with me is that the teacher that's starting the preschool told us that she had 18 kids to take care of, but was getting paid for 2. In other words, her pay was equal to that of the tuition for 2 kids, even though she had 18 in the room to deal with (not alone, but she's the "main teacher" for the room). Which I mean I always understood that they get paid poo poo, but putting the numbers to it really drives the point home. She's getting paid for 2 but she's also not paying for the building's rent, facilities, insurance, admin/support staff overhead, licensing fees, franchising fees, food, and I guess classroom supplies but let's be real, teachers love spending their own money on their own supplies even when they don't have to. I'm not saying it's right but daycares run on thinner margins than you think and I don't know what the solution is. (the solution is to subsidize daycare instead of subsidizing bombing people)
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Jan 13, 2023 16:32
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DaveSauce posted:I mean, the main thing that worries me is the teacher turnover. My understanding is that this is an industry-wide problem, but I don't have much of a basis for that other than that being the line the director gives us when we ask. A quick google shows that this is a fairly widespread problem, but I don't know if we're seeing it worse at our day care or if this is normal. I've said it before, but a daycare is really only as good as you can trust its director. A good director runs a tight ship. Staff and (usually) parents appreciate this, so that keeps them sticking around. If there's lots of turnover then that suggests there's management issues and staff needs aren't being addressed, and so they're looking to move to better managed places. Now, mind you, a lot of care providers are "temporary" staff in the first place: college students working part time, folks pursuing careers in early-childhood education, seasonal staff, etc. So you would expect some churn among them, but the core care providers should be sticking around longer than that.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:40
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well gently caress me They sent out the announcement of that teacher's last day a few minutes ago... ... and it was accompanied by another announcement of a different teacher's last day. A teacher who was supposed to take over for ones that left our oldest kid's room. So now 3 of her teachers have quit in the past 2 months... So now instead of a "hey we like this teacher maybe we'll look at it to see if we should take it seriously," it's a "what the gently caress is going on over there do we need to bail now or can it wait a few weeks." I mean I get that working as a teacher at a day care center isn't a permanent gig... never really considered that, but it makes total sense. But there's just been so much turnover lately it's starting to get ridiculous. Rumors are that the remaining teachers have, for quite a while, been busting their rear end to cover for the shortage. Now that they're down even further, and maybe hired 1 recently that I've seen, I fear that this is going to trigger a mass exodus as the workload gets to be unbearable. Or, worse, having to close or refuse kids due to lack of the legal minimum number of staff. I suppose I should add that the assistant director quit recently too, but she wasn't all that great, and any time we had to talk to her she didn't seem to really know what was going on. So thanks for all the feedback so far. Read it, don't have time to individually address it, and still trying to really get my bearings... but this seems like it's quickly becoming more urgent than it was even last night. edit: And yeah to be sure when I say "teacher" I'm talking about the main classroom teachers. They have gobs of floaters/helpers/whatever who are pretty regularly rotating through. At least the "lunch lady" hasn't left yet! If she left I'd know poo poo has hit the fan... everyone loves her and she's been there since day long before we started. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 19:11
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For a point of comparison, half the full-time staff at our daycare has been there for over five years, and a few more than 10. Beyond that they tend to get picked for management roles. In addition to our director being there for 25 years, the owner owns two other facilities now managed by folks who came up the ranks. I agree with you that if there's that much turn it points to a management issue. Even if it's a hiring issue, that turns into a management issue if you're short on staff. Hoenstly, it sounds like the ship is starting to sink ....
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Jan 13, 2023 20:45
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So, uh, apparently they've identified a candidate who accepted and they're waiting for the results of the background check. If that falls through... Apparently they have a staffing agency they're going to talk to. Yeah.
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Jan 13, 2023 23:42
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Yea I think that means bail.
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Jan 14, 2023 00:21
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Where does the money go to operate a daycare? I mean, a common pre-k daycare in my region costs about as much as a postsecondary full-time tuition or there-abouts. That tuition for the university supports a massive administration, hundreds of acres of campus, working professionals and the assorted support staff. What are the darn economics for daycares and why do I hear that it's not even very profitable to operate one? It just...baffles me. ~$3-4k a month, paying for retail salaries for caregivers and what else?!
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Jan 14, 2023 00:34
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Insurance and rent. I'm not even joking.
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Jan 14, 2023 00:40
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A Bad King posted:Where does the money go to operate a daycare? Renegret posted:building's rent, facilities, insurance, admin/support staff overhead, licensing fees, franchising fees, food, and I guess classroom supplies but let's be real, teachers love spending their own money on their own supplies even when they don't have to. I'm not saying it's right but daycares run on thinner margins than you think and I don't know what the solution is. My wife's aunt started a daycare, grew to multiple locations, and is now franchising it... but I know very little about the business. I better start learning something though because we're probably gonna need a daycare before the year's out unless I get really creative with my work-from-home hours.
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Jan 14, 2023 00:40
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Yeah, running a daycare is expensive. Say it's a 3:1 mandated ratio (kids:staff) , and you're paying the staff $30/hr, therefore charging $10/hr per kid (ie:$400/wk) only pays the staff and nothing else. Now add rent, insurance, facility costs (ie: toys/etc), food, etc - very quickly does it add up. Government subsidy is the only way to get the costs down.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:22
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unknown posted:Government subsidy is the only way to get the costs down.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:31
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We should have had that subsidized three decades ago. Another stroke against gerontocracy. Edit: strike, but I'm keeping that autocorrect right where it is.
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Jan 14, 2023 01:41
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Yeah to be sure I totally know that day care teachers get paid poo poo because there's no money left. Parents get soaked, for sure, but it's not because the day care owners are laughing all the way to the bank.unknown posted:Government subsidy is the only way to get the costs down. No but that will encourage the womenfolk to go out and get a job instead of staying home with the kids like God intended. I posted this in the nextdoor thread a short while ago. Someone was asking for day care recommendations, and this was one of the responses:  Yes, the person asking was a woman, why do you ask?
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Jan 14, 2023 01:42
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As someone who chose to quit my job and do that, gently caress that person anyway
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Jan 14, 2023 02:03
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As the person who was the treasurer on the board of directors for my son's daycare for several years while he was there, so I was intimately familiar with where the money goes and how much is coming in and how much is going out.... The vast majority of it goes to staff salaries, and they do not get paid nearly as much as they should. Along with the salary you have to pay the payroll taxes because the employer pays half of them, then there's workers comp insurance to pay for, food for the kids is a big one (At least the daycare we were at provided meals). But really it was probably 70% or more to payroll and associated charges and our teachers were not getting paid nearly as much as they should. Like we had teachers leave that could go make more at Panda Express. And I don't know if you guys have ever looked up the prices of the shelving and fixtures and stuff that the people have in the rooms but they are expensive. And I'm sure it's not like this in every state but at least in my state there are very specific requirements about what you can and cannot buy when you put around children. There's absolutely no way you can have parents shoulder the full cost and also pay the teachers a living wage. Other countries have figured out that this needs to be subsidized, but the US is using low teacher wages to subsidize our cost of care instead of providing any sort of government support.
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Jan 14, 2023 02:38
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I know potty training comes up all the time here so I apologize in advance for retreading this ground... We're embarking this weekend on potty training our 3 year old, using the Oh Crap method. But in the author's many, MANY eventualities she addresses in the book we cannot find our situation: I'm pretty sure my son, like my husband, has a shy bladder. He absolutely has to pee and cannot let it out. He's holding his legs together tightly, taking tiny little mincing steps and wants to just stay on the potty forever. He's really upset about it too. We've tried distracting him, reading to him, making him laugh, letting him watch TV, putting on soothing water sounds... he did eventually pee in the potty this morning (we're in Europe so it's lunchtime now and he's napping with a diaper on that I'm sure will be full when he wakes up), but he's very upset about it and I'm pretty sure it doesn't "count" if he's just sitting there all day. Any advice?
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Jan 14, 2023 14:43
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I believe her suggestion there is to put him on the potty then "find" something else to do in another room for a minute or so.
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Jan 14, 2023 14:52
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We tried that too. I don’t think it’s privacy he needs.
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Jan 14, 2023 15:21
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9-month-old now has a whacked-out sleep schedule, wakes up after 5 hours sleeping overnight, and won’t go back to bed in her crib. I’ve had the baby gently snoring in the baby carrier for almost two hours, but try and put her back to bed, and it’s a siren scream immediately. This truly is hell.
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Jan 14, 2023 22:21
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TBF much as it sucks, I think 5 hours of sleeping in a row seems pretty normal for a 9-month-old. We lucked out and had an easier time but at least if it's consistently 5 hours, you can plan for that. Stagger your sleeping shifts, or something? I'm sure it will improve given some time.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:29
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What age did people transition from sleep sack to blanket and pillow for their kids?
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Jan 15, 2023 02:55
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