$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

 

 

 

Apparently Multitasking is a BAD trait now?

 

Ok am I alone in thinking this is an unrealistic expectation???

 

 

 

Think I definitely need to find time to listen to the whole podcast being mentioned here for context but at first read of this meme and some of the comments over on IG all I got is that after spending 30 years working in an industry where you HAD to multitask or you risked children being injured or lost that I must have been able to adapt to having a big wide ass lens on my flashlight so I can see/do/manage more than one thing at a time … I am constantly used to doing 2-3 or more tasks/jobs simultaneously and having focus on ALL of them and yet still able to work quickly and yield great accuracy in my results! 

 

I will admit that when I was able to leave large centres and work in a smaller ratio of children that I was able to yield even BETTER results but I was still having to multitask constantly it was just way easier with only 5 littles vs having up to 12! 

 

Also admit on the last factor - YES it can be exhausting to work in settings where it’s required to constantly multitask … but there are SO many jobs where your are constantly expected to multi task simultaneously and where the ability TO do it is seen as valuable to employers - even when I worked in restaurants you had 20-30 orders up in the air at any given time all in various stages of completion and having to bounce between doing that and answering incoming phone orders or people coming to the cash to check out. You needed to be able to have great recall to snap back to where you were in which orders completion and so forth. Can you imagine how SLOW restaurants would be if they only worked on one order start to finish in the back kitchen. 

Or I think of people like Toad who are neurodivergent with ADHD or others on the autism spectrum who find having to focus on just one task very challenging to stick with and actually produce better results if they are, for example, playing with a toy in their hands, while focusing on being required to read and also needing some auditory stimuli like music on in background.

 

What are your thoughts on multi-tasking? Something we need to eliminate or a basic skill requirement to be honed to keep up in this era?  As always you are welcome to come join the conversation in our private Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' It Together community!

 

Margaret

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

 

Do you have a Saturday ritual??

Sharing is caring - drop us your must haves to help you recharge in the comments.

 

 

 

We spent some time out in the backyard cleaning up the deck to enjoy sitting out by the fire and discussing plans to have an overgrown pine tree removed, got creative digitally making fun content, Love my Aloette Muddy Up detoxification mask, added some DoTERRA lavender to my Epsom salts to help with the relaxing, currently working my way the through an Audible book Cognitive Behaviour therapy in 7 weeks by Seth Gillian PhD., Aloette has an amazing Hand polish and cream that helps turn back time on the hands & GelMoment cuticle oils are a must for healthy nails, we are currently working our way through the Mandilorian for Saturday night family movie night, I love using wool dryer balls with a couple drops of doTERRA Serenity make for amazing fresh linens and Sundays are the perfect day to plan for a sleep in - hopefully my brain cooperates!

 

Be well and if you are looking for more clean living, eating and self care tips and tricks come join our Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' It Together community!

 

Margaret

Live. Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

*post contains affiliate links

I AM coachable!

Crushing my 2022 goal to spend more time investing in my self and skills needed to rock my social selling journey! 

Digging in with all the amazing team training and supports that are in place, joined the teams monthly book club which is reading Romi Neustadt book Get Over Your Damn Self! Loved chapter 1 and moving on to Chapter 2.

Seriously did not know what I was missing with Audible books - now I can ‘invest in myself’ while I am doing the dishes, in the shower, hiking or driving! So those mundane chore times can now serve dual purposes! Like honestly I got stuck at a train today and I was like “cool I can focus on listening to my Audible”  

So grateful to @staceyregan.__  @laurie_drinkwater both are amazing mentors in the GelMoment family! 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life

* Post contains affiliate links 

Indigenous Canada Course

Like many Canadians I was appalled at the discovery of 215 indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops BC. 

 

 It sparked my desire to become a better ally to my Indigenous friends as well as to ensure that in my early learning program I am using the correct language and a more accurate 'history' than the one provided to me by my heavily biased toward while settler or 'white washed history' via my public school education which seemed to have entirely glossed over many of the horrors that were inflicted upon the indigenous peoples!

 

I signed up for an course called Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the Faculty of Native Studies that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. From an Indigenous perspective, this course explores key issues facing Indigenous peoples today from a historical and critical perspective highlighting national and local Indigenous-settler relations. Topics for the 12 lessons include the fur trade and other exchange relationships, land claims and environmental impacts, legal systems and rights, political conflicts and alliances, Indigenous political activism, and contemporary Indigenous life, art and its expressions.  

 

The Introduction session introduced the importance of recognizing that language and the words we use when talking about Indigenous peoples are not neutral. The classification and naming of Indigenous peoples has been a key tactic used in colonization. Three groups of Aboriginal peoples are recognized by the Canadian Constitution: Indian, Métis, and Inuit. Today, the term "First Nations" is preferred to the word "Indian" in Canada. "Aboriginal," "Indigenous," and "Native" are often used interchangeably. However, certain terms may be applied within specific contexts. In the context of constitutional rights, the term "Aboriginal" is appropriate. Non-Indigenous people are referred to as "settlers," and Canada, for example, could be referred to as a "settler society". Sometimes, the names of Indigenous groups commonly used are not the same as the names the people use to refer to themselves. We respect and honour these names by using the words people use to refer to themselves as much as possible. For example, Cree people refer to themselves as "Nēhiyawak;" we refer to Cree as "Nēhiyawak.

Stories are powerful pedagogical tools that help learners understand their history and the environment in which they live. The teachings from stories allow listeners to come to their own decisions and conclusions. They help demonstrate that there are many different ways of looking at problems, and solutions to those problems. Storytelling has been, and continues to be, a central part of our identity as people and as nations. We can generally distinguish between two types of Indigenous storytelling.

1. Personal stories that include observations, accounts of places, and experiences. This type of story evolves over time, and is based on the needs and relevancy to the population.
2. Creation or Teaching Stories also known as Myths and Fables. Many of these stories, which are spiritual in nature, remain unchanged over time.

 The speaker shared the Creation story about Turtle Island and how what we call North America is called Turtle Island to the Indigenous.

Abbreviated story of Turtle Island:

Sky Woman falls from the sky. And there's a whole story above that where she lives in the sky world, and why she falls through the sky, falls through the hole in the sky, and the animals help her. The geese help her land on turtle's back, and then the earth is covered in water, and so she asks some of the animals, the water animals, to help her. And so she asks beaver if he can go down and get, she just needs a handful, of dirt because, with that and her magical power, she's able to do something with it. So, he figures, beaver's pretty strong, a strong swimmer, and he says, "I can do this," and he slaps his tail on the top of the water, and he dives down, and he dives, and he dives, and he dives, and he dives, and he dives, but he just can't make it. So he struggles, and he swims back up, and he's kind of hanging on turtle's back, leaning on it, catching his breath, and couldn't make it to the bottom for that handful of earth. And so she asks otter, and otter's a very sleek swimmer and says, "I can do this. I'm a good swimmer. I'm in the water all the time," and he's swimming around, and so he dives down, and he swims, and he swims, and he swims, and he swims and, again, he runs out of air, and has to swim back up. He can't make it. So, again, he gets to the top, and has to rest again on turtle's back. And so then she asks little Muskrat, and he's unsure. He's not a strong swimmer, and she encourages him and gives him some, I guess that encouragement of what he needs, so that he musters it all up, and he decides he's going to try this. And so he swims and does his best. And he swims, and swims, and swims, and swims, and swims, and swims, and he's just about out of air, and he's able just to reach and grab just a few grains, and he swims back up. And he's just about depleted, he can hardly make it, they actually have to help him up for the rest of the way, and he catches his breath, and he gives her those two little grains of earth. And she's able to take those grains, and in her hand, because she has those magical powers, she blows on those and the earth begins to grow off of turtle's back. So, what we call North America today is Turtle Island, and so that's where that creation story comes from.

They shared the story of Wisacejak (wee-sak-ee-jack)  with us as another exmaple of the role of story-telling in the spiritual connection for Indigenous peoples.

Through stories and storytelling Indigenous societies transmit the central knowledge critical to survival, and provide a cultural framework for promoting happy, healthy communities. In this way stories hold a lot of power, think about it. Stories can elicit strong emotions from humans. They can make us cry and laugh, feel anger, relief, empathy, and love. Human beings enjoy telling stories as much as they enjoy listening to them. Wherever and whenever people meet and gather, you can bet there are stories being told. Outsiders tend to see these stories as legends, fiction, folklore, myths, or fairy tales. For Indigenous people, these stories function in essential and thoughtful ways. They work to instruct and educate on how to behave properly. They can also act as guides for how to live and engage with the world. Each nation has a creation story and it's own distinct oral tradition. There are four general components of storytelling for Indigenous people. First, stories connect the past to the present and to future generations. There are many versions of the Wisacejak Creation Story, but the meaning remains the same as it is told from great-grandmothers to their great-grandchildren. Stories are gifts to be shared and handed down generation to generation. As in Nehiyaw'iskwew, or Cree woman can be reassured that while she may not have met her great-great-grandmother. The Wisacejak story transcends time and connects her to her ancestors. This means that a story I hear from my grandmother is the same one that she heard from her grandmother and so and so on. These stories allow us to communicate with future generations in the same way our ancestors communicate with us. See how powerful stories can be? Secondly, while the sacred stories may not have changed much over time, the personal, everyday stories do change. They integrate new information and new knowledge. They may evolve with changing surroundings, food source supply and movement, landscape reconfiguration, and new encounters with foreign populations. It is important to know that even though Indigenous stories may be thousands of years old, some of the stories change to bring the past forward to the present. They change and evolve based on the needs of the population. The next thing to remember about stories is that while stories may sometimes be entertaining, there are also messages instructing people how to live and behave. Indigenous storytelling operates as a moral guide in a socializing mechanism. Stories teach the next generation how to behave and reinforce roles and responsibilities. We find many examples of this in the story of Wisacejak. Muskrat’s heroic action of diving for Earth demonstrates a lesson of perseverance and courage. While Wisacejak's laziness in keeping a peaceful community shows the consequences of being irresponsible. Finally, storytelling is a way to transmit the history of the land and cultural knowledge to the next generation. Many creation stories include specific geographical boundaries such as rivers, lakes, and mountains to define the territorial lines. For example, in the previous narrative, Nehiyawak described how Wisacejak made the land come to be. In some Wisacejak creation stories, features of the landscape to describe the traditional territories of the Nehiyawak are included. The natural surroundings of the land become the history book. We said that stories have power, and they embody complex worldviews associated with a particular Indigenous culture. For instance, the Nehiyawak or storytellers will only tell you the Wisacejak stories in the wintertime. Their worldview and belief systems are illustrated by this fact. Nehiyawak storytellers believe that because so many creatures and spirits hibernate and sleep in the winter, it is safer to tell certain stories. Invoking the stricter’s name Wisacejak in the summer is just asking for trouble.

 

The role of language in their culture, beliefs and passing down of their history - it just breaks my heart thinking about how my ancestors tried to eliminate their native language and culture by taking children from their homes into the residential schools where they tried to convert them to Christian beliefs and speaking only English.

The following article is a nice wrap up of what was covered in the introduction to the course on the importance of language and stories to the Indigenous culture and faith!  I was amazed that there are over 50 different indigenous languages spoken across North America/Turtle Island.

The interactive learning about this painting and the history and stories contained within it were fascinating! If you'd like to learn too the upper left Idle No More, Middle is the Connection to Earth, the right side top is story of Metis Women, Left side under Idle no more is speaking of the Trauma of Residential schools, centre is symbol and story of Creation of the Turtle Island, right hand middle is history of Inuit woman, on the left side again Story of Berries, along the bottom is the story of the Connection to Water

 Excited for next weeks lessons!!

Margaret

Live,Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life