To be put off using childminders because of the ones at toddler group?

[Strawberrypeachlime]

They actually seem like lovely women but they don’t watch the kids at all because they are chatting amongst themselves. Am I being unfair / unreasonable? I get it must be a really tough job but I would just want a bit more.

I hope you're one of my customers 🥰 what a lovely thing to say- please do write this in a Christmas card. She'll appreciate it

I live next door to a childminder and from what I can hear I would not send my child to one. I appreciate that it must be a tough job however I have witnessed our neighbour chilling on her garden furniture for long periods in the summer on her phone while children are the other end of the garden. Also heard her laughing as she left a baby in the garden as she forgot they couldn’t walk yet! She shouts so much I know all her mindees names and one poor little girl spends most of her time there crying. It’s awful to hear and then at pick up time hearing the hand over (shared driveway and open windows in summer) about what a great day they’ve had.

Luckily you can't hear what is happening at the local day nursery.

Can't you inform parents at pick up? That's terrible

Exactly the same here! What you see is what you get. Whether that's what you want for your child is a very personal thing. Some want the smaller ratios/solo carer thing, others want what a nursery can offer. Pros and cons I think.

I'm team nursery personally, if it's a good one.

Well that's an improvement from the ones at local toddler groups here; they neither supervised or played with the kids .... Nor were they nice women. They seemed like bitches tbh.

I was dumbfounded that they didn't realise mothers who might be looking for childcare at some point soon might be at the toddler groups and be observing them.

I looked at them and thought - FUCK NO.

Another lady I met said exactly the same.

To be fair I have to say I met a couple of individual child minders at beaches and playparks etc who seemed nice. So maybe I shouldn't let the toddler group ones dominate my impression.

There is an after school club thing for my son’s primary school, it’s based in the church across the road. Us kids sometimes play in the church grounds after school and we see them just trailing along, across a busy road and up the path hardly even noticing if they still have all the kids with them. A lot of the days we see one of the idiots running back down to the school for kids they’ve forgot 🙄

I've encountered a mix of childminders over the past couple of years. Some good, some amazing and many bad. There are a couple of playgroups round us that are childminder dominated and it is very much Lord of the flies there. Kids snatching, hitting, biting, running absolutely riot. Kids opening cupboards and running round the toilets. The childminders they are with sit in their little group in the furthest corner of the room and chat and bitch about the kids parents. One makes no secret of the fact she despises one of her mindees and is very very harsh with them and barks instructions at them.

One common theme I have witnessed among this group of child minders is that they all sit all the mindees at the craft table bark at them to do the craft with minimal assistance and photograph it all - lots of action shots. Cutesy photo with child and finished craft. Write their names on it then bark go play at them. Child minder then uploads photos to parent app. Then proceeds to ignore children for the rest of the session whilst they bitch to their mates. Each child minder does this in turn effectively hogging the craft table for over half the session. It's a shame as they are both stay and play playgroups that are aimed at older toddlers.

A lot of the playgroups round us actually do not allow childminders due to so many issues with minded children.

I've found the cheap soft plays and those that do child minder rates seem to attract the worst child minders. I actually observed one minded child eating and drinking food from other tables whilst child minder ignored them. Minded kids everywhere, crying, stuck on equipment, snatching and hitting others again Lord of the flies.

I've also seen some good child minders (usually on days out that don't have an annual pass scheme or childminders scheme or nicer - more expensive - soft plays). One child minder only minds 2 twins and she is lovely, highly involved and is so lovely with her mindees. She is closer to a nanny though as she does very long hours in the kids home and only looks after the twins. She is actually a child minder but the parents pay her for exclusive care and she works from their house. I think she charges them through the nose for it though.

20 years ago, I dropped my kids off at a supermarket creche. Absolute bargain at 50p an hour while I had a mooch. It was one of those superstores. Imagine my surprise when the kids were welcomed like members of the family. On further enquiry I discovered that my childminder left them there for 3 hours per day.... while I was paying her (if I recall), something like £10 an hour.... she was a nob in many ways, but this was the final straw.

As a former Registered Childminder I feel I must comment - the first priority must be the child. It is beneficial to take children to groups and meet/ socialise/ play with other children but obviously one must be watching/ intervening/ wiping noses/ changing babies/ taking little ones to the use the Potty/toileting the children, safeguarding the list goes on. It can be very lonely being a Nanny or Childminder and attending groups is beneficial to the adults too (yes talking and discussing childcare/ideas/problem solving feeding/development issues etc…and having a general chat) whilst watching the Mindees !
I have seen the behaviour this post is relating to and without doubt it is undesirable and should not be occurring. But please
do not label all Childminders the same !

I have been quite impressed at the childminders I've come across at toddler groups. They seem so calm and organised whilst managing multiple toddlers whilst I am feeling frantic with just one. They do sit back and chat to one another and aren't terribly friendly to mums but I understand that, they want to catch up with friends not random new mums. And I've not seen an instance of any child being ignored or neglected, all conversations are paused instantly when a child needs them.
I do regularly pass one CM out walking who I just cannot understand how many kids she has. There is a quadruple buggy with 2 tinies and 2 bigger babies, 2 walking toddlers and 3 school age from 4-11. I know the older ones aren't there in the daytime but still surely 6 pre school isn't allowed? And how can she possibly manage them all?

I used a CM for my now teenagers from reception to yr6. Thought she seemed really good when I met her. However as my kids got older and could clearly communicate to me about their day, I realised she never really did anything with them.

They would go out into the garden in summer and all play together, or watch tv etc, but she would never be involved. The real kicker was food. I'd pick them up at 6pm and they were always complaining how hungry they were. Turns out, their 'dinners' were either ONE tiny burger - no bun etc - just ONE burger by itself, or ONE slice of pizza etc etc! They'd say they'd ask for fruit, and be told in a minute - then just never be given it.

I wanted to pull them out, but the choice of CMs was terrible and overall they were happy there as got to play with the kids they saw as good friends. I ended up having to just factor in cooking another meal after being at work all day.

For me personally, I would never choose a CM for a preschool child. I currently use a nursery that has woodlands and gardens. They take the kids out regularly to attractions, the beach, steam railway trips etc and is similar to a forest school in a lot of ways. So the kids get lots of fun outdoors time not just stuck in one room but also quiet time for naps or if tired and just want to sit in the book corner chilling out.

There are brilliant childminders out there and of course some not so.

I was lucky to find an excellent group of childminders. They looked out for each other and the children they were minding. When one had to go into hospital they rallied round to make childcare work for her charges so she could have her operation. They’d help cover holidays and were a grand network.

Our main childminder was incredibly supportive to us and though the kids say she was sometimes tough on them, knowing a couple of the things my kids did (poo-gate 🫣😳), I really think she had the patience of a saint.

You can wade through this - https://earlyyears.blog.gov.uk/2023/04/20/how-staff-to-child-ratios-work/ and linked documentation.

There are exceptions e.g. siblings, her own children and continuity of care which means she can have up to 6.

@maltichi
it could have been me!😂 as quite often we pass a playground on the way to the valley with an outdoor play room, which I find more interesting to be and play in, with lots of purposely cut logs, “fire pit”, pine cones and plenty of great nature things for their imagination. The kids are free to roam in there and perfectly safe without being fenced.
But the playground is on the way to that beautiful place and if I don’t stop there briefly, I get lots of upset

I've never had a CM.

I wouldn't mind if they took them to toddler group/soft play and kept a good eye on them but didn't play with them while they were there - I think it's good for kids to spend some time playing with each other or parallel play with adults only intervening if necessary. And of course, even with good supervision you expect the odd upset.

The bad supervision you describe I would be upset by, though I have definitely seen this from parents as well.

I’m a stay at home mum and when I was deciding if I’d go back to work or not my friend who used to work in nurseries strongly advised me not to use a nursery and that a childminder would be better.

Having seen childminders at groups for the last 6 years with my 3 children I would be very, very reluctant to use a childminder.

I know not all of them are the same but I’d say the vast majority of them are inattentive and indifferent to the children at best. There is a toddler group I can’t even bring myself to go to any more as I have to watch my 1 year old like a hawk as it’s full of toddlers being very loosely supervised by a big group of childminders who arrive with massive buggies full of kids, unload them all, plonk themselves at the table and barely interact with any of the children.

There is a lot of bad behaviour that is simply ignored, a lot of fighting, snatching, crying, pushing while they turn a blind eye and carry on chatting. If one of their kids approaches them for some reason they are all full of sighs, eye rolls and snide comments. They are always making comments about the kids parents too or moaning about the children. I wonder what the parents who are paying their hard earned money to these people would think if they could see how their children are ignored and resented.

I got fed up my daughter being rammed into by an unsupervised toddler on a ride on car and left and won’t be going back. The last time I was there we sat all the kids down for snack time and I realised a few mins later that a little boy was sitting at the table with an empty plate looking so sad and lost. I didn’t want to just serve him up some snacks without checking he was ok to eat anything and tried to track down who he belonged to and it took a good 5 minutes! His childminder was off god knows where. I felt so sorry for that poor lost looking little boy. I feel sorry for all the kids in their ‘care’ who are so desperate for attention they often latch onto me or one of the other parents who are actually paying attention to our children.

I remember seeing a Facebook post recently asking for recommendations of a good local childminder and several of these women were listed as being ‘amazing’ so I really think a lot of parents don’t realise what they are actually like.

I had a friend who was an extremely popular CM. She had qualified as one to work around her own DC whilst they were small (she has a lot of children and couldn’t afford the childcare herself). I used to pop into visit her sometimes. She really disliked the children, just let them run about and made them very basic food. Parents raved about her though and she could have filled her places many times over.
She stopped doing it the second she could work around a full time job.

I wouldn’t suggest a nursery.. the things I have seen…I could write a book honestly

Perhaps the ones who go to playgroups etc are not as keen to look after their charges and pprefer to chat. I don’t actually do playgroups and rarely soft play. I prefer the park/forest or my own very well stocked playroom. My kids are extremely well looked after at ALL times!

A woman I know got an unexpected half day and found the CM and her mate halfway through a bottle of wine at 1pm. Apparently it was their Friday thing to do and how dare she judge them! She was a highly recommended CM as well.

There is another nursery story in the news today of a kid being found out on the street.

Agreed that you need to be very careful about what childcare and schooling you use for your children.

AHH explains why the CM I used stopped going to them.

Some years ago my DD was deciding between cm or nursery for DGS. When she asked one cm where they went for outings / fresh air, she said most days they walk up to the bridge over the dual carriageway to watch the cars…