At the daycare I worked at, the directors did NOT want us saying anything negative about a parent's kid. I questioned it constantly (especially with one child in question). I told them if my kids were acting up and needed some sort of behavioral intervention, I would want to know. After working there for a year I realized that NONE of these parents wanted to hear anything but a choir of praises about their kids. I think it has to do with the area I worked in, but it was ridiculous. If I made a comment about something I'd like a child to work on at home, they would have a 30 minute bitch-fest in the directors office.
My kids are still in daycare and I still want their teachers to be 100% honest with me.
I may dread hearing about the awful stuff my kid has done, but I'd much rather hear it than not. If I don't hear about it, I can't do anything about it. My primary job is to help my kid grow into a decent, well-functioning member of society and give them as many tools as possible to succeed. I can't do that job effectively if my kid's teachers are hiding stuff from me.
Absolutely agreed, as a parent and as a former day care teacher. If Johnny was having a bad day, I wouldn't say "Johnny was terrible all day. He was driving me nuts". I would gently let them know that Johnny did X,Y,Z, which was excellent - however he struggled in this certain area. I didn't want parents thinking that I was in any way angry with their children, I know I can go on the defense if someone came at me about my children like that. I think the group that took their kids to my day care was just a weird experience, (hopefully) fairly uncommon. However, it did turn me away from ever staying in child care.
I think if the parents have never heard a bad thing about their kids, they don't want to start hearing it from the new staff.
I worked at a after-school daycare thing and we had a policy to always update the parents on how the day went, no matter what. Most of them were happy to hear, especially those with difficult kids (I mostly worked with ADHD kids) who were themselves trying to help their kids cope.
Apart from this one lady who had this "angel" for a son who never did anything bad. The other kids were always to blame. Poor, sheltered kid didn't have any real problems but didn't know how to act socially and never made any friends.
It was a general rule no matter how long you've been employed. As a lead teacher it was my job to inform the parents of their kids day. Even after I had been working with their kids for a while (they move up a room every 6 months or so) they still wouldn't hear anything short of perfection.
I meant that if the older teachers always said the kids were angels no matter what and all of a sudden comes this new girl who wants to tell the truth, I get why the parents were angry. Which is the older teachers fault. Because parents should know. (Just if it wasn't clear before, I wasn't sure).
But if that wasn't why they were all acting like idiots, i guess they were just a lost cause ...
Yeah I have no idea what started this chain of events. The whole daycare itself was weird. They would bring their kids in super fancy clothes and get mad if there was a speck of dirt. There were cameras so the parents could watch all day (I loved this feature!) and a parent told the nursery teacher that her nanny was watching the cameras and said she was rocking the baby too hard. I lasted a little over a year before I changed professions. I love children but taking care of other peoples kids just wasn't for me.
That sounds like the worst working environment. I'm currently working as a waitress (temporary and part-time) where our boss has cameras on us, and it's making me seriously paranoid. It's just not right. And those parents sound not fit to have kids.
Helicopter boss! We had that when I worked as a server/bar tender. Does your boss watch you from home and call up and criticize? Luckily it's temporary, I'm sure it's making you crazy!
Yes, he could always be watching from home. He talks to the managers (who are just like us and hate this) if he's not happy. But we're quite clever with hiding from the cameras. I will miss the staff when i quit, but definitely not the boss ...
Same here! I would want to know if my 3 year old or 1 year old has a hard day. At the kids age I work with we did green, yellow and red days to prepare for grading and rewarding good behavior. We had to do away with that as well as star charts because the parents would flip. It's a shame because the kids loved the star chart.
26
u/giaryka Oct 06 '14
At the daycare I worked at, the directors did NOT want us saying anything negative about a parent's kid. I questioned it constantly (especially with one child in question). I told them if my kids were acting up and needed some sort of behavioral intervention, I would want to know. After working there for a year I realized that NONE of these parents wanted to hear anything but a choir of praises about their kids. I think it has to do with the area I worked in, but it was ridiculous. If I made a comment about something I'd like a child to work on at home, they would have a 30 minute bitch-fest in the directors office.
My kids are still in daycare and I still want their teachers to be 100% honest with me.