I'm in the mood to rant, so here I go again.
So right now, I've seen many more people asking for nannies, babysitters or just general house helpers instead of taking their kids to daycares. To be honest, I'm not surprised, and I think that in the next year, there is going to be a daycare collapse. Not sure if that is the right word but I think something has to change because working at daycares/nurseries is a nightmare these days.
So in the past two years, I've worked at six different nurseries.
Out of all of them, there is only one I would consider going back to.
Let's start off with the pay. At least of these places try to pay under $15 which is absolute bullshit. Even if someone isn't CPR certified or doesn't have a degree, they need to be paid more. Working with children is exhausting. Plus, I don't know if this is because of the pandemic or because some of these kids don't know how to act. I don't condone spanking children, but some of these kids might need it. There was one kid who wouldn't sleep at nap time unless we put our legs on top of him. Every other kid would be asleep except for him, and he'd try to get stuff out to make crafts or something.
That leads to the next part: a lot of these daycares don't allow you to discipline kids. I got in trouble for giving a kid a time-out.
I wish I was kidding. The kid wasn't listening to me so I put them in time out and got in trouble for it. I didn't stay at that nursery for long.
Another issue is management. I don't know why but only one of the places I work at had a good management staff you could talk to and trust. One place, I only stayed at for two days because the owners kept watching me on the camera. Any time I sat down, I got in trouble. For two days I wasn't allowed to sit down and on the second day, I experienced the worst pain in my back. I had to hold back tears because it hurt so much!
But the biggest issue right now? These nurseries are overcrowded, and they don't have enough teachers. My first nursery, while I loved the kids, had this problem. People would work for a week and then quit. One person worked for a day and quit. Two people were so frustrated with the daycare that they went on lunch and didn't come back. We got paid $12 and had zero benefits. Hell, they once brought in twins who were supposed to be in the early toddler daycare. Well, the parents either lied or just didn't realize how their twins weren't really toddlers because they got pushed into the infant nursery. We were supposed to only have 12 kids and now we have 13 which is against policy.
Right now, I think if parents need childcare, they're better getting a nanny. The child will get one-on-one care and there is less of a chance of the child being forgotten. Daycares these days are just not worth it anymore.