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!

i don't mean that harshly so apologies if it comes across as such, it is just that a lot of what you are saying sounds theoretical

this thread has wound me right up...

I'm glad you are the perfect parent londonone ..

I'm leaving this thread to go spend some quality time with my ds...

"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."
Why? Some careers aren't the sort you can just dip in and out of, and some women want to go back to their jobs. Why should women (and it's always women!) be penalised for wanting a career? Or do you think it's also wrong for a man to go back to work after the birth too?

God, I am actually willing Xenia to come on and annihilate you@the OP. Things must be bad!

My son's nursery was fantastic, they both attended from very young ages and I never doubted the care that was delivered there (and still dont). I miss the staff from there they were lovely.

However I had to do a placement in a private nursery and it depressed me. It was just as the OP described.

Yet I would never consider a childminder for my children, the screaming harridan who lives up the road gives a poor example of a childminder and this alone puts me off.

I don't have children at the moment that is correct. One of the reasons being I do not feel financially secure enough to afford to have them.

Frasersmummy - I did not in any way make the debate personal to specific people I simply made general points.

Also if people are paying up to 1400 pounds a month for nursery places, more if you have more than one child then I am assuming you are going into fairly high paying jobs. If this is the case then why not have your partner stay at home ( single parents situation obviously different).

Actually, Xenia would advise women to get an extremely well paid job and hire a nanny.

Well, when you do get a job that's well paid enough to support them what then? Are you going to abandon it indefinitely? Better find a rich hubby then!

Your arguments are totally hypocritical and flawed@londonone. I will eventually return to work (am currently a SAHM) because I like working. Not that I have to justify myself to you (who has no kids).

TheCrackFox - oh yes, of course Re: Xenia. How could I forget?

You obviously know very little about childminding, too@londonone

My use of the phrase "pin money" didn't give anything away about my attitude to anything. There are lots of women with young children who do a bit of cleaning/teaching assistant job/delivering catalogues precisely for pin money, and use that phrase.

I am also perfectly well aware that there are women doing the same jobs who are the main or only breadwinner in a household.

I think it's a bit rich for you to make pronouncements about working mothers' choices and actions and what is or isn't best for their children, and then accuse me of looking down on people!

the op does have a point;

all the views re; nurseries are coming from an adults perception..."it's a good nursery"... doesn't mean your child likes going there ( and they don't have to be kicking & screaming going in the door to be unhappy)..i would never put an under 3 in group childcare...what "social skills" does an 18 month old need fgs?

nurseries are a business at the end of the day, i would be under no illusion that
they had the interests of my cheque book more at heart than my child.

Well thanks OP. I hsve just finalised my return to work and nursery care for ds2 and was feeling quite good about it all.

Now you've made me feel like shit. I am very happy with my choice of nursery (ds2 went there for 2 1/2 years and if anything the standards are even higher now) but there's nothing like a thread like this to make me query what I'm doing.

Londone - FWIW, some parents do actually enjoy their jobs, even both parents so to suggest that one stays at home is pretty shortsighted.

I enjoy my job. Yes it's tough at times juggling work, kids, home etc but I enjoy the fact that I can be me and use the skills that I have worked so hard to develop. I also know that if I took several years away from the workplace the chances of getting my career back on track once thekds are older would be very slim.

Oh, just read that you don't have children.

Why are you here? MN charges lazy journalists looking for their latest femail type column fare 30 quid you know.

Stealthpolarbear - If that is adressed to me, then I suggest you read my posts, I have said several times that the primary carer could be either parent.

Also you say that some women don't have jobs they can dip in and out of and some want to go back to their jobs. Fair enough but I personally think it is supremely selfish to put a child into a nursery as a tiny baby because you WANT a job. It is my view that you CANNOT have everything and choices need to be made and if you choose to have a career and that is the most important thing to you then you should choose not to have children.

BTW I have come across Xenia before, fairly amusing in her own way.

I went to a childminder when I was about 3 or 4 who had 2 kids of her own. Her kids were bullies and nasty to me and threatened to hit me if I told on them. The childminder used to smack me if I didn't eat my lunch and she used to work at the playgroup my Mum used to take me to. I didn't tell my Mum for a while cos I was too scared, finally I told her everything and she took me out of that environment straightaway. Childminders are not always a good option and I think your OP is a pretty shitty and insensitive thing to say, especially when most of what you say is bollocks. Did you actually try and help the situation by reporting them or discussing it with the manager?

hahahahah..

Londonone you have just made me laugh out loud...

no kids .. hence the idealistic view of parenthood

come back and debate childcare with me when you do..

I know I said I was gone .. but that just really made laugh .. its sooo funny

Oh brilliant londonone, let's just divide the population into workers and breeders shall we . Which are you volunteering to be?

Have you read The Handmaid's Tale by the way?

Londonone my friend is heart broken at the thought of having to put her baby into childcare but she really doesn't have any choice as a single mother to two children she does not recieve enough support from the government and would in fact be better off working. The government will pay a large percentage of her child care costs and she will still earn a good wage.

When she got pregnant she never thought things would work out the way it has but thats life you never know whats going to come around the corner so all she can do is her best for her children.

I am not sure of your circumstances but you must lead the perfect life

Lots of assumptions here londone. So ... only the financially secure should have children - smacks a bit of eugenics doesn't it? So the masses can't breed?

All children are planned ... no they're not. My first certainly wasn't - never intended to have children until that wonderful accident happened.

Mothers who want to work are selfish? That's your opinion, that is fine. I returned to work when eldest 3 mo old, full time. She was happy, I was happy. No regrets and no lifelong damage last time I looked.

mrsmattie - Not sure what you are on about as I have never mentioned childminding.

The problem with threads like this is you are never going to get someone who uses a nursery to come on here and agree with the op are you? They are hardly going to say "well yes my dc's nursery is crap but I leave him/her there everyday anyway" are you?
No one is going to admit to that are they so of course they all going to say their son's/daughter's nurseries are wonderful, caring institutions. I'm sure no parent would leave their child there if they didn't believe this to be true.
But it would seem reasonable to accept that while there are probably some very good nurseries there also must be some that are like the op describes. What is worrying for me is the parents who use nurseries that fall into the latter group may believe that they are being well cared for when infact they aren't. There can't be many parents who would knowingly leave their child in the circumstances the op describes. And as she was there and I wasn't I'm prepared to accept her version of what went on in the particular nurseries she worked in.

Maybe you should come back when you have had kids and actually HAVE to go back to work to pay for a roof over your head and food and clothes for your kids. Some of us don't have a fucking choice! I would love to stay at home with my DS fulltime but unfortunately we are not minted and I have to go back in a couple of months time, which is going to be hard. The attitude that you have basically suggests that unless you are minted and can afford to stay at home or are on benefits and are at home all day anyway then you shouldn't have kids!

OP, yabu to state that all nurseries and childcare centres should be banned because that is just plainly ridiculous but as others have said - mostly from people who have worked in nurseries and have seen the goings-on - some nurseries are less than decent. I used to work in a nursery before I had children and I swore then that I would never leave a child of mine in a nursery until they could talk and tell me about it. At the start of every day, there was a session where we would teach the children about shapes, colours etc and this would last for around 20 - 30 minutes. Not a problem in itself but the babies were strapped into highchairs at this point and made to sit through this session too Many of them would obviously become grumpy and unsettled but the staff were too busy doing planning, preparation and keeping all the others quiet and still to do anything with the babies. However, when Ofsted visited, the daily running of the nursery was completely different! The babies weren't made to sit through the session but were taken to a different part of the nursery (it was in a church hall) with members of staff and allowed to play with baby toys etc. There were countless other things that was just wrong with this nursery but it would take me all day. On hindsight, I should have voiced my concerns to the authorities but it is only since I have had children, that I can see things more clearly. Having said all this, my ds went to nursery (a different one!) when he was three and loved it and my dd started at the same nursery as ds when she was three and adores it! She goes three mornings a week and moans like mad when she can't go, so I have no qualms about the level of childcare there. On the subject of CM, I have no experience of them personally but I would always choose a nursery over a CM.

ultimately it's a matter of personal circumstance, and yes I do think there's an element of choice there for some people.

Personally I believe in a parent staying home to bring up the children, and I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. However that is my personal belief and one which I wouldn't force on other people, in the same way as I wouldn't want working parents to tell me I should have got back to work at the earliest opportunity.

For some women it is a matter of wanting to work rather than needing to, and I'll be honest and say that I don't necessarily understand that attitude when you have a young baby but again each to their own I suppose. I remember my neighbour telling me about putting her 4 month old into nursery and saying"he's such a sociable child, he needs to be with other babies so he'll make lots of friends,"

But even staying at home through choice has its drawbacks. My ds is now six and in year1, and I'm now in a situation where I couldn't go back to work even if I wanted to because it's impossible to find work that fits in with school hours and school holidays etc.

Kiddiz, I agree that what OP has said is (unfortunately) very likely to be true but I personally think that the title to the thread alone is completely out of order let alone her first post.

I know that she has since apologised for that, but really if she couldn't see that it was likely to upset a large number of people before posting it then she really needs to think a lot harder about how she phrases any future posts.