Three local ECEs were selected to become “lead” early childhood educators for the Communities of Innovation grant project. Below each discusses what the lay person may not know about child care.
Sharlene Poslowsky,
Early Childhood Educator Christian Life Day Care
Q: What do Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) want voters and governments to know about child care? Sharlene: If we just added one percent to the GST , that would fund child care for all of Canada. It is so simple.
Q: Many other good causes might also be helped by this one percent, is there anything else voters should know about investing in child care? Sharlene: Yes, I think many Canadians would be embarrassed to know that we in Canada spend less of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on child care than any other developed OECD country – even the US. Spending on Early Learning and Child Care Programs: Percent of GDP by Country Data Source: OECD. (2006). Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care. Annex C. pg. 246
Q: What might the ordinary parent not understand about our child care system? Sharlene: Some parents don’t understand that Early Childhood Educators bring special skills to the job.
Q: What kind of skills? Sharlene: As a mother of four I thought I knew a fair amount about children, but when I got my ECE I realized there was even more to learn.
Q: What didn’t you know as a mother of four? Sharlene: When I trained to become an ECE, I learned that at certain developmental stages children just can’t get the concept of how to follow the rules of a game or how to share. Parents don’t always have this training. I didn’t. As a parent there were times when I thought my child’s behaviour was just wilful disobedience.
Q: How does your training help children and parents? Sharlene: Parents who share everyday parenting dilemmas with a child care professional can better bridge the gap that extended family used to fill. Raising young children alone can be quite isolating. Parents need others to check-in with them, to help them, to give them ideas about how to handle certain behaviours if things aren’t going well. I think when I was a child there were not so many mothers working. Grandparents were around a lot more. Parents weren’t just on their own. Now a parent of a young child can easily be alone all day for several days.
Q: Are there other ways your early childhood training helps parents? Sharlene: Well, part of our job is seeing things like the red flags. That is a very important part of our job. We see a child up against all the other children, and we see how a child may not be reaching certain developmental milestones. The child’s parents often don’t know this because they have nothing to compare that child to --especially a parent with a first child or an only child.
Q: So how can parents find a good quality child care? What should they look for? Sharlene: Room set up and routine are signs of good quality care. I can tell immediately if the room is not set up properly. There will be more chaos. The place can turn into a “running centre” with kids racing around uncontrolled. When the room is arranged properly, children feel secure. There is an air of calmness in the room. Children should have quiet places they can go where their play will not be interrupted by loud boisterous play. Also, routine is very important. Children love the predictability of routine. They feel more secure when they know what comes next.
Dee Conely,
Director Quadra Children’s Centre
Q: What might the ordinary parent not understand about our child care system? Dee: Well, for one thing – there is no “system.” There’s just a loose collection of different child care options that range from superior to risky.
Q: What do you mean there is no “system?” Dee: One of my ECE (early childhood educator) colleagues explained it this way: when you use the Community Centre, you tend to just notice the services that are offered. These services are like the “tip of the iceberg.” What you don’t see, what is submerged, is the system: the massive infrastructure of funding, regulation and coordination that supports those services. When the average lay person thinks about child care, they tend to picture a service that’s offered. What they don’t know is that this service is all there is. There is no system just below view. There is no large ongoing funding/organizing structure underneath. Child care centres in today’s world are just like pieces of loose ice floating around randomly in the sea. And it is to this “non-system” that we entrust our youngest children during their most impressionable years.
Q: That makes me wonder if anyone should send a child to child care? Dee: That’s not today’s reality. Parents do send their children to child care. Recent reports show that across BC 70% of mothers with children between the ages of 3-5 are working. A 2006 survey of Campbell River Kindergarten children showed similar results: 67% of our local families report using child care.
Q: So what can a parent who wants quality child care do? Dee: When you go to a child care centre, watch how ECEs support children’s play. Are the ECEs supporting this play by noticing what a child has done, by asking the child about their creation, by wondering with the child what comes next? Learning in these preschool years is not about drills and skills or ingesting facts. Learning is about nurturing the child’s natural curiosity and passion to know ‘why?’ Why is the sky blue?
Q: What do children need to be ready for Kindergarten? Dee: I think many of my colleagues in the school system would agree that a child’s preschool years should not be narrowly trained on “getting ready” for school. Young children deserve to have a place that celebrates them for who they are right in the moment.
Q: There seems to be a lot of contradictory messages for parents right now. Some stress the importance of early learning and others say don’t push your child. Don’t raise a “hurried child.” Who’s right? Dee: Well meaning parents can inadvertently interfere with a child’s development if they think their child has to be the best, the first, ahead of the others. Parents have to ask themselves: “What might my two year old be missing if I’m pressuring him or her to learn the ABC’s?”
Q: But isn’t early literacy important? Dee: Sometimes parents hear the words “early literacy” and think they have to be teaching their child to count to ten, to write their name and to sound out words so that they’ll enter Kindergarten “ahead” of all the other children. What parents need to understand is that early literacy should not be stressful. Easy everyday things like really stopping and listening to your child is early literacy. So is singing with your child or reading nursery rhymes and stories to your child --all of these activities allow a child to develop oral language skills. All of this is early literacy. I guess the simplest way to say it is that early literacy is about enjoyment. I knew I had succeeded with my seven year old son when he put down a book and as he was running out the door he called back, “I like reading, Mom.”
Q: We’ve talked very broadly about child care, but to wrap up, what’s the next step? Dee: We are blessed on Quadra to have quality child care. What if all parents could afford this kind of quality care? Imagine. What might schools be like if every child entered school with a love of learning, a sense of security and the ability to get along with others? Quality child care can go a long way toward making this happen.
Jamie Anderson,
Early Childhood Educator, Cari’s Infant Toddler Centre
Q: Some say child care is in crisis. What’s the crisis? Jamie: There’s not enough affordable quality spaces. This means there are families who have to work that have no safe, healthy place to put their children when they go to work.
Q: So what happens? Jamie: Parents struggle and the child struggles. Just as an example, in some families one parent will work the graveyard shift so he/she can take care of the child during the day while the other parent works the day shift. In other families, children are shuffled back and forth between grandparents, friends, and ad hoc child care providers. These children have no real structure to their days. Many end up eating poorly or spending hours in front of the TV. No one is able to take care of how their day unfolds and what is best for them.
Q: What is the child missing in situations like these? Jamie: We know from recent research that a child’s brain development is shaped by their early experiences. Young children need stable, predictable caregivers in their lives who they trust and who have the energy and time to interact with them and support their early learning.
Q: How would the lay person know what quality child care is? What are the signs? Jamie: Quality child care centers are not only licensed, they also employ licensed staff. This staff has taken specialized college training, they adhere to a code of ethics, and they each have an individual license to practice in the province of BC.
Q: Are there any other signs of quality care? Jamie: I tell parents to sit and watch a child care centre in action. Is the staff squatting down at the children’s level –engaging the children face to face? Are the children playing with each other? Quality child care offers rich opportunities for children to learn social skills. There should be an air of productive contentment in the room.