Happy Hearts Family Child Care & Preschool
Believe in you!
1. Does the child care environment affect my child?
Due to high ratios and lack of teacher support in the classroom, large facility child care programs cannot guarantee every child is receiving individualized assessments and learning opportunities according to their individual needs. Environments have a major impact on children’s mental development. Research repeatedly shows that young children exposed to low quality child care score lower on measures of social and cognitive skills. Facility child care program environments are inconsistent and stressful with high teacher turnover rates, unmanageable adult-child ratios, gaps in language and culture between programs and families served, insufficient training and lack of affection. Your child should not have to suffer from a program’s ill condition. Along with children’s physical, emotional, and social development, young children develop an attitude about learning that will follow them for the rest of their lives, so it is necessary to make certain it is a positive one.
2. What is the difference between a home child care and a facility child care?
After having been a preschool teacher for the past nine years I could no longer work in the industry after witnessing too many injustices placed on children due to the many inconsistencies found in child care. There are so many dynamics going on in a classroom of 24 children and two teachers that you cannot effectively teach or care for every child. Many times a child’s great accomplishment will be missed because we as teachers are busy tending to behavior issues, scheduling problems, excessive paperwork, et cetera, and that is just heartbreaking to me. There are children who have been in a classroom all year that teachers do not know and to me that is completely unacceptable. Preschoolers and especially young children need that one-on-one attention because it helps lay the foundation for the rest of their learning experience.
I have had children come up to me and say they do not like school which led me to the realization that a large structured facility environment is just not right for some children. Teachers understand that every child learns differently, but not every teacher or parent understands that where children learn is just as critical as how they learn. Children react to their environment. If their environment is aggressive, unfriendly and/or unpredictable children will have a strong reaction to that and their behavior will reflect what they are experiencing in their environment. Children are natural born imitators. They imitate whatever they see. Labeling children is a common occurrence in child care and it is inappropriate. Labels stay with children throughout their educational years and in turn labeled children become what others perceive them to be. Experiencing and witnessing all of these troubling conditions provided me with an opportunity to see how a system can fall short when children's needs do not come first. I felt empowered to make a positive change by standing up for children and providing them with a healthier alternative of a low ratio, stress free, home-like environment for them to achieve their best with all the learning opportunities available in a facility child care.
3. How do I choose a child care?
The place you choose for you and your child should make you both feel safe and comfortable. Children sense when they are in a fun and secure place and will adapt to their environment quickly if it feels right to them which is a great sign. Parents also have great intuition and if something feels off then that should be a red flag. It is important that all of your questions get answered and that you can tour the home before enrollment. There are no silly questions, so always feel free to ask about policies, procedures, health and safety guidelines and any other questions related to the care and education of your child. Your child is your number one priority and leaving her/him with someone who shares that view is important.