Childminders at soft play

I would have said the opposite is the case on here.

quite a few of the staff where my kids are have a degree in childcare.

@Notagain75 sorry I've replied to you but you are the wrong person! Completely misread the post as it was a similar one to mine

Also the nursery staff at my LO nursery are excellent and clearly live being with the kids!

I once took a kid to a playgroup when I was his nanny, and met a group of parents with their kids. A few weeks into going one of them mentioned something about me being a mum and I said oh no I’m not his mum I’m his nanny. They said they assumed I was mum because I spent time with the kid instead of sitting in the corner with the other Nannie’s.
don’t does happen.

they are not all like that. Some nanny jobs I have made a couple nanny friends who enjoyed spending time with the kids, and other nanny jobs i really ended up only befriending parents.

Not surprising. I am a sahm, so I go to lots of church groups whereI see a lot of child minders in the wild. They sit on their phones and act indifferent when the children cry. They usually have four kids each, which usually include two wild 4 year old boys who run around causing mayhem while they ignore them. The children usually have snot streaming down their faces, the littl ones cry and don't get picked up. I think people are overly optimistic about how their children are treated by childminders and at nursrey. I'm a teacher and have worked in early years settings so I've seen the indifference and boredom of staff looking after young children, so I would rather stay at time with my daughter.

@TJk86
"It’s nothing to do with what you remember. There is a great body of research showing that it’s best for a parent, ideally the mother, to stay home with a child until around age 3. Author Erica Komisar has written some great pieces on this. In summary:

• The first three years are critical for emotional development. Babies rely heavily on one primary caregiver for consistent comfort and regulation of stress.
• Secure attachment forms through constant, predictable presence.
• A parent’s presence helps regulate cortisol (stress hormone). Young children aren’t neurologically equipped to handle long periods away from their primary caregiver.
• This early emotional foundation affects long-term mental health. Early caregiver consistency is linked to resilience, empathy, and reduced anxiety later in life.

Continues, nurturing care from a primary caregiver in the earliest years best supports healthy emotional and neurological development.

Apart from that, I would not leave a young non-verbal baby/child in someone else’s care (apart from trusted family members). There are too many cases of abuse in childcare nowadays."

You may be interested in Elena Bridgers work. She discusses childrearing in hunter gatherer societies (the way the humans have lived for the vast majority of their existence). Actually babies in these societies are looked after by many different care givers at a time and often only spending around 20% of the time with their mothers.

Babies staying at home with only one care giver is actual very "unnatural" compared to the way that humans have lived for most of our existence.

She critiques the anti daycare/nursery research as it often doesn't take into account good quality vs bad quality staff, amount of time spent at nursery and the relationship with the parents at home.

My daughter has a great relationship with her nursery workers and they are the same people on duty everyday. Whereas if they were poor quality staff of course it would be detrimental.

My daughter’s childminder is absolutely amazing.

Gosh I feel upset just reading that 😢

There are some childminders local to a soft play I take mine to. One of the kids was crying and when I told the childminder she said “that’s just how he communicates” another time my friend had gone and one of the kids had wandered into the party room (off a corridor near the toilets) and they thought the lost him and everyone at the soft play was then hunting for this kid. This group are so interest and just sit at a table and chat. All so disinterested. But where I actually live there are two childminders and they’ve both been v good when I’ve seen them out and about. They’re both ex primary teachers though.

The sneering about qualifications is horrible, but if someone isn’t doing their job well it ultimately makes no difference to me how well qualified they might be.

If someone with numerous qualifications thinks taking my two year old to the most run down soft play in town and sitting gossiping while she wanders around on her own is good for her independence then I’d rather go with someone who doesn’t have as many qualifications but at least is kind and attentive.

This is why I found the behaviour of some childminders so sad to observe when I took my children to playgroups.

The childminders have presumably been trained in the needs of young children, how to build confidence, self esteem, provide appropriate stimulating environments that are learning opportunities, how to interact with them to make them feel valued, loved and safe to branch out to become absorbed in play with their peers and thrive.

They must be aware of how detrimental it is for children to be ignored. It was always children who looked a bit vacant, quiet, weren’t engrossed in play, didn’t look as though they felt they belonged that were with these kinds of childminders.

Sensitive souls who don’t yet have the vocabulary to express how they’re feeling in the care of childminders. I do think it creates a sadness for the way you felt about your early years that you always carry with you and chips away at your self esteem.

@Notagain75
Yes I am definitely thinking about child minders. I'm not mainland UK so we don't have OFSTED but there are inspections. But OFSTED aren't there everyday like a nursery manager would be overseeing the care given. And of course you get poor nurseries but I just prefer to have more eyes on my child as then if there is a bad egg it's more likely to be reported.

I know of at least 2 child-minders in my area who are taking in more kids than they are licensed for and charging a cheaper rate...just makes me concerned what else they are doing if they have no regard for the law.

I'm a childminder and have been for 25 years. I don't hover around the children all the time at groups, and, yes, I do chat to other people- we do need adult conversation as well as children's! My mindees are encouraged to be independent and do their own thing, to interact with other children and to have fun!
However, I know exactly where they are and what they're doing. I know childminders who act like the ones others have mentioned on here, and they give the rest of us a bad name.

Your ignorance is staggering. I have 2 degrees and higher qualifications and I work in a nursery. It's a personal and lifestyle choice for me. Many of my colleagues are similar, there is a mixture of backgrounds and qualifications. Yes there are some lazy staff but that's the same everywhere. I'd be more concerned right now with the narrow minded attitude you are passing onto your 'precious child'.

When I was a sahm I went to soft play with my friends so we could chat and let's face it, get a break from the intensity of full on minding kids at home. You can keep an eye on your kids while chatting, it's different if the kids were hitting other kids, but for the most part the purpose of soft play is for the kids to socialise and have physical activity. They learn these skills be the parent distancing themselves not trying to lead their play and stifling them. I know it's a fair point that they are getting paid but they are also in lieu of parents and it's ok to behave as a parent does IMO. It's a job with no lunch or toilet breaks and it probably took them ages to get organised to get there so I don't begrudge them taking a bit of a break. They were probably interacting for hours before they got there so that snap shot doesn't really tell you what goes on at home.

I guess ideally you wouldn't see it as 'being stuck in with a kid', but rather taking care of your child, interacting with them, learning what they're interested in and teaching them about the world. I guess some people naturally find this less fun than others, and obviously there are aspects of childcare that are pretty repetitive/thankless - but if I'm being totally honest, I do raise my eyebrows slightly at people who have so much disdain for being a sahm. It feels like some kind of internalised misogyny ('not like other mums') idk.

But of course everyone is free to decide what's best for their own family, and paying for engaged childcare is probably preferable to babies being looked after by a parent who resents staying at home with them.

Were the children causing any problems at all? Or struggling to get on the soft play equipment?

It wouldn't shock me if the kids are happy playing and there is no danger (which depends on the soft play). And you don't actually know what age the children were.

My 2.5 yo is very happy to go on her own, she will call if needs help. I wouldn't expect our childminder to behave any differently than we do in that situation if the child is happy.

This is ultimately what lead me to chose a nursery over a childminder.

How does this " primary " carer work in practice when both parents do equal care then?

Like both work full time on opposite shifts. And care for the child when not at work. So same amount of hours caring for child each. So which one would you count as the " primary" carer?

Why? For me it would be.. Id have had no money, no company and been stuck in with a kid. Why is that a good thing?

Are you thinking about nannies?
Childminders are very heavily regulated, they have to take complete training , including on the EYFS, first aid, safeguarding before they can even apply for Ofsted registration then there isn't a house check to see if the premises are suitable, which includes checking all adults in the family whether they will.be involved with the children or not, and they are Ofsted inspected in exactly the same way as a nursery.

So the OP wasn’t in the soft play area with her child because they were happy enough to be off by themselves but maybe the children with the childminder were also ok to be off playing with each other

Childminders are regulated by OFSTED, like all early years settings.

I had a similar experience last night. One of my kids was at football training and as it was raining I took the others to the leisure centre cafe across the road. A child in there immediately latched onto my kids (he was a similar age to my oldest who is 9) and started wanting to chat and make friends. He told us his sister was swimming and he was waiting for her. He had an after school nanny type person who was supposedly looking after him but who was actually speaking on her phone, completely ignoring him. When he went and sat back down with her she silently pushed a Harry Potter book across the table to him while carrying on with her call. When he said he’d finished it she rolled her eyes and waved her hand as if to dismiss him. He was so sweet and she was awful to him.

I know which school he goes to and considered trying to track down the parents but I’m not sure how. They ought to know how their kids are being treated by those who are being paid to look after them.