$10 per day childcare - celerbation or concerned

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 So want to say “for now” to all those answers from politicians and advocates like the AECEO and OCBCC for this … based on historical precedent of what happens when the government is responsible for the majority of funding I find it hard to trust promises like “ratios won’t increase” also do not see funding being distributed equitably to see improvement to wages across the board - large licensed centres are going to end up eating up the majority of funding because well they are the least financially viable model of childcare and have the highest overhead model and overtime easy to hypotheses that there will be less and less for the tiny amount of licensed home childcare that is currently is represented in the licensed model let alone if the “unregulated sector” starts to try to migrate over placing more demand on said funding that’s been allotted which is based on the currently model that only meets 25% of the actual childcare used in Ontario. 

 

Again based on precedents of history - hate to keep saying it but look at Quebec …. despite the sector being unionized for 25 years now their home childcare sector, under this same model being represented here, gets the scattered crumbs that are leftover and preCovid had started roaring strikes because 25 years in and home childcare was still making LESS than minimum wage because they were getting away with paying them daily rates vs hourly wages and the length of the days just kept increasing as parents worked longer hours and had longer commutes you know to help pay for these programs … and this is despite the reality that home childcare has the least amount of overhead, provides the lowest ratios/group sizes for children and the access to a responsive attentive primary caregiver throughout their early years journey that all the brain and trauma informed research shows is vital to success in the early years. 

 

Currently licensed programs cannot properly staff programs NOW where are they gonna get all these new staff from to open up new spaces or to be home coordinators for agencies?

How quickly are we gonna see more and more centres who currently only hire ECE because they believe that’s what high quality program should be having to resort to hiring unqualified staff a because of shortage and b because they can pay them LESS and the burden of the pressure from the government not funding enough in wages to keep up that practice - which is gonna put more responsibility on the ONE RECE required per group because with the CECE and protected practice laws the non qualified staff are not SUPPOSED to be doing program planning, discussing development with parents and array of other “only a RECE” can do

As always people get hyped about the sound bytes and then are greatly disappointed by what actually rolls out! 

 

FDK is almost 20 years in between the pilots and than the full roll out is STILL underfunded and looks NOTHING like what was promised

Based on conversations with peers I it is likely that majority of home childcare providers will WAIT and see what actually rolls out before being concerned about this … I am willing to guess that any families going on wait lists NOW for this new program will likely have children in university before they actually opening up spaces for them! 

 

I would also bet money that the majority of these 86,000 spaces being promised  of which 15,000 are already been already created in 2019 and counted in this promise will be for SCHOOL AGE children and not the 0-4 age group which they do NOT tend to open up  too many of at a time in comparison! School age care is the ONLY care that can actually balance an operational budget because their ratios are so much higher than current infant and toddler or even preschool programs which is why programs choose to focus on those age groups with school age and preschool spaces being in abundance and toddler and infant spaces in great demand in the licensed sector!

 

And I have to say it once again if parents cannot access this 'social support' $10/day program to let a parent stay home and DIY their own childcare or get their nanny, extended family member or neighborhood home childcare costs covered via the program too than it’s NOT gonna fit the definition of ‘universal’. At best based on the current landscape it is going to be a very expensive investment that is only reaching 25% of the children in Ontario and that just does not seem like a EQUITABLE investment in the early years or respecting CHOICE for Ontario families!

 

Can’t help but be concerned about the future generations that are gonna come up through this model specially when again the research that shows that Quebec’s long term studies on the actual social/emotional and mental health outcomes for their program users has been alarmingly poor So sure the program got more parents into the workforce cause both can work but at what TRUE COST to children and families living there cause there’s more valuable things in life than lost INCOME.

 

Hug your little ones tight and if you believe in a higher power pray that today's announcement about Ontario joining the Federal government's $10/day platform turns out to actually be beneficial to the CHILDREN it is meant to serve as building blocks for their life long learning path! 

 

For the first time in two years I ironically now have something to be grateful for with the pandemic having closed my own early learning program and my health having forced me to retire from practicing early childhood education for the time being - I can advocate from the sidelines without the stress of having to live through this uncertainty of roll out first hand! 

 

Changes in childcare have never run smoothly as they rolled out and sadly far too often caused more stress and work for those on the front line than benefiting them! 

 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

 

 

Is letting a child cry detrimental to them?

So this meme was shared today in an early childhood education group and it started a huge debate among educators. Some saw this as parent shaming and others as defending that infants NEED to be allowed to cry it out to learn how to self regulate and understand the concept of delayed gratification.

In my experience this is the challenge when we read something and assume the two extremes around what it’s meaning in the actual middle of the spectrum. 

IMO this meme isn’t saying NEVER let a child cry because you’re gonna break their fragile mental health and cause trauma if you do. 

Yes infants are gonna NEED to cry from time to time because that’s how they communicate when they are frustrated/bored as well as all the other reasons like pain/hunger/scared, etc. There is a HUGE difference between allowing an infant a moment or two of delayed gratification during which they may cry and not dropping everything and meeting their needs for them immediately IF while they are in that state the adult is being responsive to the cry by verbally reassuring them “I hear you. You sound upset but my hands are busy changing a diaper/making dinner/going pee (whatever is delaying you from attending to them immediately). I will be there in just a minute to help you” and trying to help them corevulare through verbal and body language cues or if seeing them struggle a minute to reach for a toy or change positions themselves and they are crying in frustration and you are giving them a minute of frustration to see if they can use that to propel themselves forward and meet the need themselves and using body language are to cheerlead them on. Then when you are done with your task or you’ve given them that moment and can see that they are gonna need assistance than you are in fact attending to their need that made them cry so the need it’s actually met just delayed - that approach is what is called responsive caregiving and most definitely teaches them that yes my need WILL be met if I am just patient or persistent.

Verses the other far end of the spectrum here, that research like this is talking about IMO, where infants are left for LONG periods of time to cry it out with no support at all from a responsive adult in their life’s and their need that started them off crying is often NEVER met either entirely or it’s left for so long they given up trying to have it met - aka they are left up to hour or more to cry in their beds to learn to “self regulate”, they are left for hours in distress because they are feeling insecure in their environment but are not picked up and soothed cause ‘that will reinforce their crying behaviour’ and they need to learn to ‘self regulate’ or “don’t pick them up you’ll spoil them” or they are in pain and cry out and left to cry it out to “toughen em up”, or they are left to cry when hungry cause “the clock says it’s not been 4 hours yet” and “they need to follow their schedule” at all costs and the array of other old school approaches to caregiving around infants and toddlers and the behaviour of crying and why it should be ignored and not reinforced that were used in infancy/toddlerhood not only by parents but by ECE in childcare settings too. Approaches that, yes with the research done today when we know more about the brain and how it works and longer term studies have been done on various approaches has shown, it can in fact create attachment trauma and other trauma responses in the brain as the infant grows into other stages of development that for some children can result in increased aggression and lack of impulse control. It can affect the ability to form healthy attachments in adult relationships and an array of other mental health barriers around trusting one’s needs will be met. 

This new information is not to lay BLAME on those who’ve fallen into that old parenting advice - every generation of parents does their best with the tools and resources they have at the time  but as we learn as a society what might work better than we should be having these discussions around our practices so we can DO better moving forward with the new information we have. 

It’s the same with the old school “corporal punishment” argument where there are those who still say “I was spanked and hit as a child and I turned out fine” … but how might we have turned out if we HAD NOT had that form of discipline and instead had a gentler more positive approach to what occurred when we were making mistakes ? Is it possible it would have been better and healthier for our attachments, relationships and view of authority and trying other things in the world where we don’t know the success of them for fear of being punished if we do try them? And why are we settling for “turning out fine” when we could be reaching for “turning out exceptional”?

Also to touch base on a  couple other points that came up in the thread on Facebook that prompted this blog post. 

On the topic of these memes “shaming” parents who let their children cry. I totally agree with the advocating for the importance of a caregiver, be it a parent or third party, to know their own limits for dealing with adversity in caregiving such as the stress of listening to a baby crying and nothing working to sooth them and that it is totally better to tell baby “I need a break for a minute” and set them somewhere safe and walk away for a couple minutes to collect oneself, grab some coffee, wash their face whatever they need to do to ground themselves before coming back to try to help baby again - that IMO is still totally within the realm of responsive caregiving. Or to even know their threshold of when they need to reach out for back up from family/friend/neighbour/coworker to tag on so they can take over for to give them a longer break to take care of themselves and their own mental health. Raising tiny humans is HARD and we definitely need to to do a better job to support and not shame or judge people for needing to ask for HELP with the task! 

The two things do not need to be mutually exclusive - we can ensure we have the support system in place so that both the infants need to feel heard/secure/supported in their distress AND the caregivers need to protect their own mental health in face of that distress and not feeling like they can help their tiny human in that moment because to own cups running on empty.  

There is also the reality that due to the fight or flight response humans have that even in the most responsive healthy attachment based modes of caregiving situations you are still gonna have the exception where young children still show “aggression” because it’s a)  the nature verses nurture of human beings occurring and b) the fact that it is developmentally appropriate in early childhood to learn by trial and error as they figure out their world around them … so some personalities are just going to be more engrained with the ‘fight’ response when they are faced with an adversity/stressor. The trick to avoiding growing up into ADULTHOOD with STILL leaning impulsively towards aggressive solutions to adversity and solving one’s problems is how RESPONSIVE we are to supporting young children to develop better empathy, conflict resolution, and anger management techniques so that they have the tools they need in adulthood to cope with what nature engrained in their brain pathways. 

There is so much that is newly discovered every year about how amazing the human brain is and the connections between the nature and nurture outcomes in life affecting the brain and what our role as educators of the early years is in helping to advocate for the “when we know better we DO better” in a way that is not judgemental of the ways that came before us! 

It took me a lot of years of therapy to get to the place where I can look on my own trauma filled childhood with authoritative emotional and physically abusive parents and accept without blame that my parents did the best they could with the knowledge, resources and skill set they had at the time … I don’t hold blame or judgement for them! They loved me in the only way they knew how. 

As an adult I now know better because I looked outside my family circle for information, I have access to the Internet and so have better resources and tools in my toolbox so I can do better than those before me and I can do the hard work end the cycle of parenting style that I had and do better for my children and grandchildren - and hopefully they will know even better and have better tools that I did and continue working towards helping ensure that all children can do more than the benchmark of ‘fine’ and instead have the benchmark be ‘exceptional’ building blocks from their childhood experiences 💗

Ultimately we need to remember that when we KNOW BETTER we strive to DO BETTER … no shame, no blame, no punishing ourselves for what came before because we lacked the tools we needed to do better! 

Be the change we want to see in the world! 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life  

Professionalism in the age of Internet

 

Just wanted to share a PSA to remember it is important to be cautious about what we post on social media, about how we speak out on social media and so forth because under the CECE Code of Ethics and Standards for Practice we can all be held accountable for violating those standards by the College even when you are NOT AT WORK or engaged in your scope of practice - for example one of the CPL groups on Facebook where ECE often vent has over 14,000 members and you just do not know who is reading/watching or taking potential screenshots of the professionalism, conduct and potentially negative opinions of the field of the ECE within here. 

 

 

 

If you read the CECE newsletters there was a recent disciplinary actions filed against a member of the College for behavior that happened AFTER HOURS between two colleagues who had chosen to socialize outside of work and an altercation happened that ended up being reported to the College and the person was found in violation of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice and disciplined as a result.

The reality is that whether we individually agreed with it the College of ECE is something that MANY in the field, the AECEO membership and OCBCC and other early years advocates and so forth, have all advocated for DECADES to see happen - actively petitioning the government to help make it happen by changing the laws. creating new laws and providing start up funding to get it up and going as the first step in ECE being recognized as the professionals we are. Seriously as a new grad in 1990 this was the 'goal' talked about by professors and it took over 20 years from it to be an idea to be a reality - cause the change in our sector is SLOW.

Like it or not it is now been made a legal requirement under the Early Years Act to have a college that oversees and regulates the ECE sector so all the venting and complaining in the world is not going to charge the reality that the College is not going anywhere. So IMO we need to find a way to accept this as a professional requirement to practice now on top of the diploma and do our best to let the anger/negativity go because it honestly does not serve us - it creates a mindset of this field sucks where we stop remembering the things we love about the field and our WHY for entering it. 

 

 

IMO it also does not send the message to the public that may be reading our comments or overhearing us at Starbucks that we are ARE professionals who understand the importance of having a regulatory body to protect the PUBLIC, to build their trust and respect in knowing that there is an organization that oversees the profession and holds practitioners to a higher standard than was previously exhibited and can actually prevent someone from practicing entirely. The time where substandard ECE who managed to pass college but do not have the actual skills or motivation to thrive in the sector were able to just jump from centre to centre after being fired with no way to 'communicate' to future employers that they should NOT be practicing. Sadly police checks ar NOT ENOUGH because you can not belong in this field and still not have broken a law yet that would show up on one. Sadly even references are NOT enough because no one is going to leave the person who FIRED them as a reference and most organizations have a liabity rule where they will not disclose it anyway even if they did leave them as a reference. At the end of the day THAT is the role of the College - to protect the public from substandard ECE who managed to graduate with the diploma but should not be practicing and to raise the bar on professional conduct of those it regulates. The college was NEVER about what it could actually do for US but rather how we can show the PUBLIC that we are professionals with high standards of practice who are deserving of the respect and resources of other professionals doing similar work.

Sadly we still have a LONG way to go to actually accomplish that much of which is our own fault because not enough of us are standing proud to be a member of said regulated profession and as a result most of the public does not even KNOW nor CARE that we are regulated. At the end of the day IMO if we want to be better paid and have more buy in from the public to FUND that for us we need to be doing a better job of SHOWING them everything we actually have to DO to practice ECE. Ask any parent if teachers are regulated they KNOW about the Teacher's College. The same cannot be said for US :( 

 

 

 

I also know that many members, myself included, are frustrated by the cost of membership in relation to our low wages - a very valid concern and that is something we can actually work to advocate to change while still remaining professional about the College and its role in public safety. As members we VOTE on who is going to represent us on the Colleges Board - so vote for someone who is going to actively champion ways to reduce the cost of membership and create policy where membership is reduced if retired/on parental leave/ medical leave! Perhaps relocating outside of GTA to lower the enormous cost of rent and other expenses in that region is the first place to start ... living in a digital era with remote work and remote meetings there is NO reason that the College has to be located where it is and for the amount of money the College spends on RENT alone the College could BUY a property in a region of Ontario that has lower cost of living - heck they could partner with other early years to house some rental space and actually generate INCOME for the College to reinvest in keeping membership fees low and offering more to membership! 

 

 

The requirement of the CPL is not going away either that too so it is a waste of our time and energy trying to do away with it - it has been legislated right into the Early Years Act as a duty of the College to ensure as part of its regulation of the sector that professional development is ongoing and contains an annual self assessment component, goal setting and records of learning. Every regulated body HAS continual professional learning requirements built into their oversight mandate ... so while we cannot change THOSE things we can change what those things might look like! Members have been giving lots of professional feedback about the challenges of the current CPL process being used and some of it seeming redundant and time consuming on top of already busy lives of ECE - they have already made some ammendments in 2019 based on feedback and the last communication sent out indicated that they ARE still listening and are working on another revision to the process coming this Spring. 

 

 

Personally now that we have a membership account to log into I would LOVE to see them develop the CPL so that it can all be done VIA that membership account portal so that members donot need to stress about loosing their work or not being able to manage the formating with the downloaded copies and so forth - just create all the required components IN the membership section and record it there - and that way the College has easy access to randomly audit and there is no added expense or work to ECE called to audit having to figure out how to get their documentation either converted to digital to send via email or the cost of copying and shipping out their CPL! It is 2022 and we have 55,000 members paying $160 annually SURELY there should be money in the budget to hire a tech whiz to create a website program that could manage that! 

 

 

Basically it comes down the the serentiy prayer "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." we need to try our best to focus our energy on the things we CAN realistically change!

 

You only get one childhood. Lets make sure it is full of magic, nature and discovery! 

 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life