to think that day care centres or 'nurseries' should be banned?

[Goodomen]

Having spent some time working (doing supply) in several different nurseries I have been appalled by the treatment of the babies and and young children.

The babies spend most of the day crying, desperately wanting to be held or have some kind of one to one attention.

They are all forced to 'nap' at the same time whether they are tired or not.

They are put in highchairs and fed one by one with the poor children at the end of the row crying until it is their turn to be fed.

The worst part is when the parent arrives to collect their child and asks how they have been they are told 'He/She has been fine, had a lovely time' even if the child has been crying all day!

Why oh why would anyone out there child in such a place?
If you have to work get a childminder!

georgimama - the fact that you hold such jobs as childminder, nurse, teacher and care assistant in such low esteem says far more about you than anything else. The relative contempt with which you list those jobs is interesting as it is exactly those women and men who you leave your precious child in the care of.

Of course women can be lawyers/pilots/MPs etc but IMO if they choose to do what YOU obviously consider to be a "high" status job then they should be prepared to take a break from it, or there partner should whilst they have young children.

Your attitude towards those in lower paid careers, and yes I consider nursing and teaching to be careers as much as being a lawyer or an MP, says volumes about you.

I accept elements of the what the OP said (and my dd has been in nursery care since 6 months old for 4 days a week). We have been lucky. She went to a nursery where there was no more than 6 babies in the baby room at any one time, and always a 1 - 2 ratio. This was because it was a RAF subsidized one that was set up for slightly more babies, but the room was not full when we sent dd there. I turned up at all sorts of times and she was playing/cuddling happily. The staff would take pictures and videos of the babies everyday and give them to us to take home and gave us 2 huge scrapbooks of photos of doing loads of things when we had to leave after 6 months due to moving.

Good nurseries can be caring stimulating surroundings for babies/small children. In time of old we would have left our babies as a group with relatives whilst we went foraging for food, and up to the fifties babies were cared for in groups. This construct of a baby having to cared for by the mother at home came about in the fifties when the conservative social forces were trying to get woman to stay at home with no thoughts of another lifestyle....having been scared by all the working women with their outspoken opinions during the war years.

I am not a nurse for 'pin money'.

There are nurseries exactly as the OP describes and I know because I was stupid enough to put my daughter in one. I pulled her out on day 3 but it still makes me sick to the stomach that there were babies and young children who spent every day in such a place. Of course I did report my concerns to Ofsted.

As a mother of more than one child, myself a child with several siblings, and the friend of several multiple-children families (including twins), I am amused at the idea that a baby can only be well cared for by a person who has noone else to look after.

If a childminder or a nursery nurse would be a bad choice because looking after more than one child, does that mean we are only allowed to have a second child once the first has left home? Or that noone is allowed to have twins?

Any baby who is not the first child will have to put up with waiting to be fed while another child is sorted out, or having their nap at a set time that fits in with the rest of the family commitments. That's life. Get over it.

I am entitled to have an opinion about other peoples choices the same as they can have an opinion about mine. I don't think nursery is the right place for young babies same as I don't think feeding your child Mcdonalds for every meal is a good idea. Some people do it but that's not a reason for me to think it's a good idea.

Just out of interest how much does it cost to put a baby into a nursery full time?

Bad nurseries should be reported. But let's not forget that there are also bad parents. And loads more parents who are caring and who try to do a good job, but who are not very patient or practical and do not have a great understanding of child development.

My DS (18 months) is very happy in the nursery he goes to for three mornings a week.

He too smells of perfume from all the cuddles. He beams at all the staff and has learned all their names. They are flexible about his day if he doesn't seem tired/sleeps through lunch/whatever.

To ignore/call for the banning of the many, many good nurseries out there, downplay the work of the underpaid but dedicated staff, and undermine the confidence of parents who have to work, on the basis of a couple of anecdotal observations is self-righteous and irresponsible IMHO.

And I don't buy that anyone could not have realised how emotive the subject was, especially if they've spent more than five minutes on mumsnet.

Very .

A career break is fine if you find yourself pregnant at a time in your life when you have little financial comittment. Or you are one of those lucky people who can plan their families to the right month/year.

Unfortunatley life has a habit of not going to plan and therefore when your darling baby arrives your choices as to what to do next are limited

walk a mile in my shoes londonone

"Not every woman in the world can, or wants to, get a part time flexi-hours pin money job as a cleaner/teacher/nurse/care assistant/child minder. Some women, heaven forbid, are the primary wage earner."

Some women are the primary wage earner whilst doing the above jobs!

FFS.

My Ds has been in two nurseries, starting at the age of 4.5 months. When we moved across the country, the only thing I cried about leaving was the nursery.

His first had CCTV which you could access remotely and securely so you could see exactly what was going on in the baby room. And DS was fed on demand, slept on demand and cuddled as he wanted. When he started on solids, obviously they had meal times, but if a baby was tired and not going to make it to the meal they would either give it to them early, or save it for later. I never saw a child left crying, and they divided the eating up so that each staff member only had one child who needed all feeding, and then one who self fed, or could manage some on their own. They were very,very rarely up to their ratios and had one of two members of staff there constantly.

His new nursery is also lovely - loads of hugs, cuddles, and two members of staff have their children with them. I have no doubt at all that they have genuine affection for the children.

I did visit some poor nurseries when looking round, and I reported one to OFSTED immediatly after our visit. I also know directly of one bad childminder, and see another who has 8 children after school, including 3 under 3 - so not much individual attention

londonone - have you ever used childcare?

Costs can vary hugely depending on where you are in the country - anything from £25 - £70 per day

My dd absolutly loves her nursery and she often crys on her days off.

You can get bad childminders my friends ds came home from a childminder with 12 different bruises on his body, at least in a nursery this would never be able to happen!

Not saying that childminders are bad because my dd has been to them as well but i prefer nursery. At least if your child is crying at nursery they can be handed to someone ekse if they feel unable to cope.

you are entitled to an opinion on other people's choices .. but to voice it to their face is very rude...keep the debate non personal

and I dont know how much a full time place is.. as my ds has never gone full time

i'm afraid i too have to agree with the op...(although willow and tiramisuu have worded it better!)

i too have worked in nurseries...not all of course, but many "stage" things for parents benefits...open days where staff are told what the answers to questions should be, not what actually happens, where daily diaries are filled in the same for each child, again, as another poster said, before mealtimes etc...

day care is run as a business..to make profit and minimise outgoings....

it seems from this thread that many of the posters defending nurseries are the ones whose children attend them. the fewer posters who are saying that nurseries are not always what they seem are the ones who work in them....

cm too, again some are excellent, others not so.. (i was watching a group of childminders i know in soft play sit and chat whilst their mindees were crying, falling over, being wreslted by other toddlers etc and were being completely ignored....)

at the end of the day, the only way to know exactly what happens to your child each day is to do it yourself (or partner or grandparents etc). not always possible i know, but true.

Costs vary hugely. We pay @ £550 a month for 40 hours a week. This is in Lincolnshire where wages are low and consequently nurseries can't charge loads. I would imagine you would pay a LOT more for nurseries in London and the south east.

£70 per day???? oh my goodness

I hope they get fillet steak for that!!!![grin

I don't hold jobs of that kind as low status. Nothing I said shows that I do. My mother is a nurse. My brother is a nurse. My sister in law is a teacher. They are all dedicated professionals and good at their jobs. Most nurses earn considerably more than I do.

I would imagine if you could step down from your soapbox for a moment londonone you would at least manage to agree that those jobs are however "traditional" jobs/careers pursued by women because they acommodate flexible working hours a lot more easily than other "male" careers.

Many nurses cut their hours or bank, taking a hit in earnings whilst their children are very young. Their career is still there to be developed when the children get older. It is relatively easy to reskill and return to work - the government are crying out for qualified nurses and teachers who have not been working for some time to do just that.

You can't do that in most careers, and I'm simply saying it isn't feasible for every "professional" working woman in the country to be a teacher or a nurse.

You can't take a break from being a lawyer in the same way - your skills will be completely left behind and the glaring hole in your CV will haunt you for years, if you ever get another job you'd have to drop years of PQE and it wouldn't be worth going back to work at all.

As you obviously think a woman's place is in the home that would probably please you.

frasersmummy - I totally accept that not everyone has choices and peoples circumstances change etc. However I do feel it is wrong to plan to have a child with the intention of putting them in nursery at 6 months so you can get back to your job or career. I feel the government push in terms of childcare and getting women back to work is wrong and that the focus should be on families and parenting rather than childcare.

I also believe that you should make sure you are financially able to support a child BEFORE you decide to have one and that some people work not because they have to but because they are not prepared to scale back on luxuries and downsize their lifestyle.

i think it is really sad that nurseries get such a bad press - they seem to be seen as the lowest form of childcare

the plain truth is that i am defending it because DS's nursery is BRILLIANT - if i had the slightest worry or unease he wouldn't be there

i am still astonished that people who work in nurseries and see things which are unacceptable don't report it

why wouldn't you?

Haven't read the whole thread, but just wanted to sign in as another mum of a happy nursery user. I've turned up at meal times (without warning) and was very happy. I've seen children being cuddled and looked after. If DS has a bad day or doesn't eat much they tell me - so why would they lie at other times? Their description of him at nursery seems to 'fit' with how he is at home on any particular day - clingy, happy, chatty, off his food, so I'm confident they're not just making it up.
He used to cry when i dropped him off and picked him up, now he goes to the staff for a cuddle when I drop him off, and wants to show me what he's been doing when I pick him up.

Well, fair enough, but I have always been really happy with the daycare my children have been to.

The nursery my son went to as a baby was actually a charitable organisation - a 'community' nursery - so run to cover costs, not for profit.

Are you a childminder?@OP. . You know, there are shit childminders just like there are shitty nurseries. And the myth that childminders provide one-to-one care is well, a myth. If a childminder has 4 or 5 kids, that's a lower ratio of adult-to-child than in the baby room at a nursery....

To be honest, I don't think a bitter rant about any form of childcare is helpful. Most parents don't have a choice.

Londonone - you write as if you don't have children ...

sometimes shit happens - i think it is better, to have 2 incomes - look at the number of people losing their jobs at the moment

if soemthing happened to DH's job at least we could keep a roof over our head and vice versa

also, i work not to go on holidays and to buy fancy cars, but to pay the mortgage

georgimama - I believe the use of the phrase "pin money" was what gave it away!

I think it?s wrong that we should try to silence this kind of debate because it might upset working parents.

At the end of the day, if you have to put your child into a childcare setting because of work, then surely any parent would want to be sure that that child is in a safe, nurturing environment? And while for some there is the option of paying for the smaller, private nurseries, for others there is no choice but to settle for second best. Except there shouldn?t be a second best, all urseries and cildminders should adhere to minimum standards which should be far above the standards that seem to urrently exist in a large proportion of childminding and nursery settings.

These bad nurseries and childminders can?t be as few and far between as people would like to believe, the bbc don?t seem to have many problems finding them for their documentaries, and there are ample posts from people on mn who have had bad nursery and cm experiences.

At the end of the day we really have no idea what is happening to our children when we leave them with someone else, especially when they are babies and still non verbal. So something needs to be done to ensure that standards in childcare settings are higher than they currently are. Ratios for babies should be higher, i.e. two babies per one adult instead of three, childminders shouldn?t be allowed to have as many children as they are i.e. three children under 5 plus five children over five meaning that one cm can have up to eight children in their care at a time. And fsted inspections should happen more regularly than they do, once a year if possible, and totally unannounced, with the ability to close the setting if the standards are not adequate.

It?s not about banning these settings, it?s about doing something to make sure that a parent can leave their children with someone, safe in the knowledge that they will actually be adequately cared for.

My ds attended a nursery for two mornings a week from when he was nearly three, but it was more for his social development and to give him a chance to socialize with others away from me as he was very clingy, but if I had to make the choice on grounds of work I would still have chosen a nursery. I would never use a childminder.