nursery for babies

[clarinetplayer]

to tell my sister that she will miss out on many of the most important milestones in her baby's life if she sends her aged six months to nursery 5 days a week from 8am until 6pm. This is longer than a school day. My sister got very offended when I suggested that being looked after as part of a cohort of 8 babies by three carers was not ideal for her seven month old daughter. She doesn't need to work full time but loves her job and is worried that if she goes pt she'll miss out on promotion. Is it unreasonable to think that now she's a mum she should put her daughter's needs first?

Kew didn't suggest that attachment wasn't important, katiestar, but that going to nursery doesn't (in and of itself) create attachment issues in children. And I am sure she is right.

(sorry kew I do know you can defend yourself, yet seem unable to stop myself posting in annoyance!)

YAVBU OP. What your sister does with her childcare choices, is none of your business.

We can only draw on our collective experience and fwiw, here's mine. DS1 went to nursery from 6 months. He is now 6 and happy, confident, independent boy who is securely attached to his family.

DS2 has been in nursery for 12 hours a week since he was 6 months and will be going up to 30 hours in September. He has a keyworker who looks after him and the one other baby in the nursery apart from when she is on holiday, when he is looked after by the nursery owner. DS's keyworker doesn't have a university degree she just loves children and provides a safe, caring and responsive environment for him. He genuinely likes nursery and at 11 months gets excited about going there. I certainly think that he gets a more stimulating environment that I could provide on my own at home. That's not a dig at SAHMs - it's a truth about ME as a SAHM.

The truth is that any environment whether at home, nanny, with a CM or at a nursery can be a safe, nuturing and loving environment and equally they may not be. That is where individual judement comes in - only an individual in their particular circumstances will know what the best choice for their child is.

"But attachment is the most important thing of all for babies." - did you read my post at all? You're trying to teach me about attachment issues despite what I said

Of course you might have a great deal more experience than I expect of reactive attachment disorder .

Pointless discussing this further, my pet hate is people (as they constantly do) trotting out attachment problmes with nursery when the child is perfectly normally attached to their parent.

Again I can only say I have never met a child who has attachent problmes as a result of going to a decent nursery (in fact any UK nursery) - and I'm guessing that I'm the only person on this thread with both practical and theoretical knowledge of the issue. But by all means continue to lecture me on its importance.

Kew, I share your frustration with people who are hellbent on extrapolating the attachment theory from abusive/neglectful situations to perfectly loving and ordinary situations, to justify their life choices.

A little (attachment) knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I concur - that's an absurd (and dangerous) argument.

And it entirely (this is what I always trot out every time this tiresome subject rears its head on MN) overlooks the fact that the SAHM is a very recent concept. Until the 1950s women either worked (if they were poor) or had a full time nanny looking after their children while they swanned around cutting roses and sketching the vista. Only then did the SAHM get invented.

'
WOHM/SAHM nursery/or not rich/poor, single/double parent etc. does not matter. What they lack was responsiveness to their needs especially before the age of one and continuing to the age of 5. Nurseries can be as good as and even better than some parents at providing responsiveness and a good decent nursery is better than neglectful parenting any day. (I overheard one lad (12yo) telling his friend very matter of factly about how he was quite severely neglected at home when he would have been about 3 and it makes sense now to me why he is as he is.) By the time children reach school, changing course in their behaviour patterns is stuck.'

Well said thebuzzingnoise. Thats what I always think from my own experiences to. It is much more likely that a chaotic homelife is the reason for poor behaviour in children. I have seen it time and time again. It is definitely the most important thing regardless whether the child had a sahm or working mum

'Sunny, I'm sure lots of children do have fun at nursery (but babies?? hmm) But I think it would be wrong to give children the idea that life is one long round of fun. Children need to experience the wonder of mundane, everyday life with someone who cares about them more than anything else on the planet.'

Children do get to experience this though when they go home. They are not at the nursery 24/7. That was all I was saying I personally like the fact that my daughter gets the full range of nursery activities and then when we are at home she has the library, park and trips with mum and the being at home. I know I am in a very lucky position to be able to do both.

All I am saying is I think that what decent nurseries provide is fantastic so I do disagree with the OP.

I wonder where these sweeping bullshit statements about nursery staff come from. All the carers in my daughter's nursery do a fantastic job, and it's obvious to me that she's well loved and that she loves them in return.

They do a fantastic job in caring for my daughter and all the other children there and I'm very grateful for it.

There is nothing wrong with your sister's choice, or with the choices of those who decide to stay at home etc.

What there is wrong with is this darned system which means it's so hard to get part time and/or flexible work.

I am a SAHM but would rather be working part-time.

But you try to get a decent part-time job, not just one that pays ok but one that actually uses a few of my much-underused brain cells.

And wouldn't it be nice if your sister's job could finish at, say, 4pm so she could then spend a few more hours with her baby?

I am just saddened to see women tearing each other apart over this issue. We really should be more supportive of each other. And work together to make changes in this male-dominated world. Instead of falling into cat-fights all the time.

But surely her sister could at least stay off for the full year + accrued holiday and parental leave she is entitled to.But she doesn't want even though she doesn't financially need to.

Katiestar, you seem to be fighting a bit of a one-person battle. FWIW, I agree with you.

Erm, where's the clarinetist?

Rueful?

Women all around the globe work. It's how it is. Most children are perfectly happy.
Unless you see a deeply unhappy child why worry about someone else's choices?
And I speak as someone who uses no child care whatsoever?

I've heard and seen too many crying babies at nursery to ever contemplate it)
Posie, babies cry. They cry at home, they cry at nursery. It doesn't prove anything.

YABU

I did pretty much the same to my DD (8-6, 4 days a week) and she is a happy bright confident loving little girl, ready to start school in September.

I haven't missed any milestones in her life - how would I? The first time I saw her walking was just as special for me, even though I knew she'd already walked at nursery (but maybe I'm not so uptight about that sort of stuff). Unless you watch them for every second of every day, you can never be sure it really is the first time iyswim.

Leave your sister to make the right decisions for her family, and save your energy for your own.

katiestar - just because legally you are entitled to take a year off, doesn't mean every workplace makes it easy. I've worked in companies where they discourage it by only offering the most nightmare jobs to people who took the full year. Because you don;t automatically get your old job back after 6 months off, they were fully allowed to do this.

And you really are talking nonsense about nurseries and about kids of 6 months not needing socialisation. My DD at 6 months most certainly did need it, she's always loved playing with other kids, both of her age and older. Hence her being happier at nusery now that she ever was at home with me or DH.

TheBoss, I really, really don't agree. Your daughter may be an exception - but as a rule, babies of six months need to be with a parent. Nobody else is going to give them the absolute love and adoration that they need at that stage. It's sad if people really believe that their six-month-olds are happier at nursery than they would be at home.

My DC have absolute love and adoration. They just don't need it 24/7 to develop into happy, well-adjusted children.

Taking a full year can and does impact on your promotion potential - it happened to me and I took 8 months. That may not be important to you but after working my way up for 15 years it was a horrible shock. It's back on track now but I wouldn't advise other women who are ambitious in their career to do it.

IHJL - I think most 6-month olds would be happier in a happy environment than unhappy at home with a miserable mother.

Boss, I'm sure that's right. But that's precisely what I find sad. The ultimate message to the child there is: sorry, being at home with you makes me really miserable. That has to convey itself to a child, even a very young one. If your parent doesn't want to be with you, then what does that say about you? I think these are the attitudes that are storing up some terrible long-term problems (and I don't mean to get at you personally, Boss: I know nothing about your individual circumstances. Mine is a more general point).

YVBU. Nurseries can be lovely places, and I know from experience that a child can be incredibly happy there, even if they do 10 hour days. My DS went to nursery from 6 months, 5 days a week and 8-10 hours per day. When he was at home, he had parents who were so happy to see him and spend time with him that we went the extra mile to enjoy that time. I don't think it would have been the same if one of us had stayed at home, doing chores (there would have been no extra money to pay for help with just one salary), visiting uninteresting baby groups and seeing our careers go out of the window. DS is now 7 and he couldn't be more socially confident, lively and caring.

I am not even sure what 'absolute love and adoration' that a parent supposedly provides means.

Parent never left a baby to cry because he/she was tied up attending to another child or doing something else? Is every minute or even every other minute intense interaction. How often do busy parents actually interact with their babies whilst their babies are kicking around on a mat. How about walking the baby in a buggy.

So much of the day-to-day care of a baby is pretty mundane stuff that an attentive carer, who is largely freed from household minutiae and covered by other carers, can more than adequately provide.

I would think carers (in a reasonably good nursery) are even more attentive than the average parent with other children/house to care for.

YBVU is what I meant, of course.

LadyBiscuit - you are totally right. I just can't understand why people think that the SAHM route (which of course can be great if that's what the mother and child want and can do, just as other childcare options can be great!) is somehow traditional before our society got all (and this is a quote from someone's post) "me me me"...

Its nonsense. My father, for instance, only saw his mother a few times a week for tea with her in the nursery. He and his sister had a full time nanny and nurse almost 24/7, as did most other families in his social circle.

And Kew - the attachment stuff is ridiculous, isn't it? I know very little about it but from what I have read etc, I gather "attachment" issues mean where, for instance, the child is in (as a random example - may be way off key) a Romanian orphanage left on their own in a cot for 20 hours a day!

Also (and I have no axe to grind here - I have yet to decide on my childcare route - I luckily have the choice of what I want to do), some SAHMs do not provide a good environment for their children. I say this becasue my mother is a speech therapist. A large percentage of her work is with mothers and toddlers where the mother simply is not communicating or talking to the toddler at all, so the toddler has not learnt to speak at all. Sadly, basically all of these instances arise within a certain social democratic (i.e. the more under-privilaged sections of our society) but the mother is ALWAYS a SAHM. And my mother always recommends that the child go to nursery to get some better developmental skills!

This is not to pass any judgement at all, its just an example showing that a SAHM is not automatically "best" for the baby. What is best is whatever works for you in your and your baby's unique situation.