Quite often, dealing with friends and family in a business sense can be frustrating. You definitely need to be strong and make sure that your personal relationship can endure the working one. I suggest that before agreeing to care for the children of family or friends, you make sure they understand the following:
1) The working relationship cannot affect your personal one, i.e. no favoritism and no hurt feelings should issues arise between you.
2) The rules, policies and pay dates for your daycare, apply to everyone-friend, family or otherwise and that they too must sign a contract agreeing to abide by these rules and policies established for your daycare.
3) Their children must also abide by your rules and be disciplined in the same manner as the other children.
4) If they cannot agree to the above, then you will not be able to provide care for their children. In a situation where you are already working with the friend or relative, I suggest that you provide them with a written contract and ask them to sign it. Although late, it’s better than not having one and this allows you time to cover your policies and possibly correct any misunderstandings regarding your daycare policies that person may have. If you have a signed contract with your friends or family members, enforce those rules just as if they were any other daycare family.
On the first day of care for any child, regardless of who they belong to, make the rules of your home daycare perfectly clear. If the children do not listen, or follow the rules then apply the appropriate discipline. It is imperative that you be consistent and follow through after every warning.
Providing quality childcare is a team effort, one that involves everyone, encourage teamwork from the beginning of care, no matter whose children you are caring for.
Source – How To Start A Daycare
About the author:
Kris Murray is a business coach for child care professionals. She is the author of “The Daycare Success System”, a training course featuring 8 hours of audio that helps people learn how to start a daycare business that will be successful. She is a contributing member of the National Association for Family Child Care. Kris & her husband have two small children and live in Northeast Ohio. To learn more about Kris and her products, please visit: http://www.daycarehotline.com
Tags: family, friends, relatives
Posted in Providers | 
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Working at home with your own children as a family daycare provider offers many rewards and challenges. Having a positive attitude and operating a home daycare in a business-like manner plays a major role in the success you may or may not experience.
Your attitude can greatly affect how you act or react to the challenges you may encounter while caring for other children in your home.
Simply talking to your children or daycare children and being creative in how you handle certain behaviors or situations, allows you the opportunity to deal with those instances as they occur. Quite often, you can turn an unpleasant situation into something that is laughable or at least manageable.
It is imperative that your children feel special and loved. They need to know that even though they share you with other children during “Daycare hours” you love them and are available when they need you.
One great tip is to signal to your children when mom’s in “work mode” by wearing a special apron, visor, hat, or other clothing item with the name of your daycare & a cute logo. When you put your apron or visor on, it means the work day has started. Parents will also take you more seriously, and your kids will know it’s time to follow the daycare rules.
Following a daily schedule and being organized should allow the time needed to complete the necessary tasks of maintaining a home and running a business, while making quality time for your own children.
Enforcing strict hours of operation for daycare parents should reduce the number of early and late arrivals, which can greatly impact your family life and your children’s behavior.
It’s also important when you spend so much time at home, as a mother, provider and wife to make time for you as a person. Make a point to get out of the house every other night, if not every night. Go for a walk, go to the mall, the library, take a class, do whatever it takes to get away from the house on a regular basis and focus on you.
Scheduling ample “time off” not only for yourself but for your family to attend school functions, vacations and doctor appointments is also an essential element of providing home daycare. This allows you time to refresh yourself and spend more quality time with your family.
Source – Child Care Business
About the author:
Kris Murray is a business coach for child care professionals. She is the author of “The Daycare Success System”, a training course featuring 8 hours of audio that helps people learn how to start a daycare business that will be successful. She is a contributing member of the National Association for Family Child Care. Kris & her husband have two small children and live in Northeast Ohio. To learn more about Kris and her products, please visit: http://www.daycarehotline.com
Tags: attitude, balance, life Posted in Child Care and Daycare, Parenting | No Comments »
As a parent who has a child that would bite, I know it can be a frustrating at times. The center that my son attends told us that it is very common for a child at his age to bite. This was good information to know but it still did not make the situation easier. We always wondered on the way to pick him up if he bit another child that day and we would pray it was not the same child as the day before. Our child would bite at least one child a week and it always seemed to be over a toy or his stuffed animal. The poor child he seemed to bite most often was a child he played with all the time. Because they were always together, it proved to be a challenging situation to prevent. The center even tried to separate them from each other but they were good friends and was difficult at times. Shortly thereafter the other child moved to a different and we thought the problem was over. Even though the incidences were less frequent, he still continued to bite. We eventually helped our child from biting other children with some tips we found online and in books. You will find those tips below but first lets look at why a child bites another child or person.
Experts say a child bites for different reasons and some of those reasons can be the following:
* Defending – This seems to be most common form of biting. Since the child cannot speak to communicate their emotions they bite. This can happen if the child feels their space is being invaded or if something is scaring them.
* Emotions – Some children know that biting will cause a reaction and for the most part a bad reaction but they still do it for attention.
* Experimenting – Since children are learning new things everyday they experiment with their mouths. This can happen during a teething period for younger children.
* Frustration or Irritability – Just as the point above, this holds for true for a child who cannot communicate with their words that they are having a bad day.
Let’s look at ways to help your child stop from biting other children. First you do not want to yell at the child or bite the child back. This will confuse and scare the child. By doing any of these things above you are disciplining a child who does not know any better. We never yelled at our child when he would bite another child. We just kept telling him to use his words to express his feelings. Here are some other tips to help you deal with biting.
Attention – Give the other child who was bitten more attention than the biter. This works well for a child who bites for attention.
Avoid – Avoid the situations that could lead to a biting incident. This could be playing a game where you pretend to nibble or any other action that involves putting your mouth on something other than food.
Intercept – Watch the child to see if current actions of emotions could lead to them biting. If you see the child becoming angry or frustrated remove that child from that activity or situation.
Teach – When the child does bite another child, teach the child that is wrong by looking at them in the eyes and saying “No biting It hurts and we don’t bite” Ask them to use their words next time if they need something.
It is important to use the steps above as guidance. If your child goes to a center ask them to help monitor the situation. Most centers have dealt with these issues before. If all else fails, they will eventually grow out it.
Are you wondering how we ever made out? Our son finally stopped biting. I believe that having patience, having support from the employees at our center and using the steps above was a huge help.
Tags: biting Posted in Parenting | No Comments »
Getting your child to sleep can be a difficult chore for parents. Sometimes they are overly excited about something and other times they are acting not tired or they are scared. These represent different challenges to parents that are trying to get their child to sleep. In this article we will discuss certain elements that will play a role in getting your child in a good sleeping routine because it is very important for a child to get a proper nights rest. Having a child get a good night’s sleep will help them in developing their memory, improve their overall mood and perform better in school. I think a child’s bed time routine is set when they are a baby. I know they say having a schedule with a baby is impossible but I think laying down a few rules early really can make a difference in how your child sleeps. What if you are past that stage with your child? Don’t worry, hopefully you will find some useful tips from this article to help you with getting your child a good nights sleep. The first thing to start with is a bedtime routine. If you are going through other scenarios with your child like potty training, leaving on a vacation soon or anything other major distraction it might be a good idea to start a routine when things calm down. Below I have outlined a few things to help in setting your new routine started.
Meals and Snacks
- Try having your meals at least two hours before your child’s bedtime. This will allow time for the food to be digested and help the body to relax.
- Avoid giving your child sugar loaded snacks before bed. The sugar can cause excitability in your child and will not allow him to relax.
Bath Time
- Use warm water for their bath and try to use a soap or shampoo with lavender. This will help calm and relax the child.
- Before you give your child a bath lay out the clothes they will be wearing to bed. This is help get the child dressed faster after they are sleepy and cranky from the warm tub.
TV Watching
- If you child watches TV before going to bed make sure you limit the time. If you can get them to watch a certain show every night you can use that as a bedtime alarm. “OK honey when Sponge Bob is over it is bedtime”. Don’t let the child fall asleep watching TV. This is developing a bad habit that would require a TV for your child to fall asleep. This could cause problems if find yourself in a situation where you don’t have access to a TV.
Room atmosphere
- Make your child’s room cool, dark, comfortable. Try to keep the room dark with a soft nightlight. The temperature of the room should be around 68 degrees. If you are going to read stories to your child use a tableside lamp with a low wattage bulb to read.
Story Time
- If you do read a story to your child every night make it short. Have the child pick the book and tell them how much you are going to read. If they book is too long read only a section and save the rest for tomorrow night. The great thing about reading a book is this allows the child to get comfortable and tell you if anything is wrong. (itchy pajama tag, uneven blankets) When you are done reading the book give your child a kiss goodnight and turn off the light and close the door.
Your child could fight you on a few of this things since they are not use to having a routine but stick with it and soon you and your child will be getting a good night’s sleep.
I hope this article has helped you in finding some tips for getting your child a good night’s sleep.
This article was published from www.paparents.com
Tags: sleep habits Posted in Parenting | No Comments »
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