Thinking of becoming a CM?

[LucyBucy]

I'm mulling over becoming a CM as a bit of a career change - I've got a 7 month old baby and am on maternity leave at the moment. It seems like quite a rewarding a challenging job to do and it would also enable me to stay at home with my daughter.

I have a few concerns about long hours, am wondering how exhausting it is (!)

Does anyone have any tips/advice/comments??

Thanks

Hi there! I've just registered as a CM and got a 4 year old starting in October so far. In other words I haven't started yet! However I do think it makes a great career if you want to stay at home. And what's great about about it is that you can completely choose the hours. It's only going to be long hours if that's what you decide to do. I'm planning to take on a couple part-time and I'm always going to be finished in time to watch Neighbours (that's the theory!).

This board is great - I've only just joined it and they are all very friendly. I hope they will give you more useful information!

I found actually becoming a CM v easy - for me it was 2 saturdays course then 2 further saturdays First Aid, and the initial inspection from Ofsted was much easier than expected.

hth

Jacqui x

Have a look in the CM staff room, we talk about everything and any thing in there

It is tiring, unappreciated, can be underpaid, demoralising, and plain hard work, but Ive been doing it for almost 30 years so cant be all that bad

Seriously I love the job, wouldn't change it for the world, and for me it is a more than a job, it is a career, I first trained as a NNEB more years ago than I am prepared to reveal , and became a child minder long before OFSTED, when I was a single parent to DS.

Get hold of Surestart and go along to a briefing and see what it would involve in your area, find out if there is a local group (NCMA would help you there) see if you can go along and visit the group, see what they get up to.

Interesting that you say surestart do the briefing shosha, the one I went to was run by NCMA, and after promising to send my CM1 and 2 forms oncondition that I sent in a form stating that i would attend the rest of the courses, they haven't arrived yet!

DHthinks I should get my solicitor to file a "racial discrimination" case against them!

Agree with everything Shoshable put.

Saltire - our training was through the local council's Early Years team. I agree with your dh - it's terrible!!!

You're right about it being exhausting. Its not uncommon to find me fast asleep on sofa at about 6:45 pm!

The most important thing, for those in a relationship is to have support of dh/dp as they often have no idea what's involved until they come home to a floor full of toys/parent firmly deposited on sofa when their favourite tv program has just started/wanting to go on pc when you've got a ton of cm stuff to do ... Also you need to consider the impact on your own child(ren) who will have to learn to share you and probably their toys too.

I love being a cm, but its not for everybody. One thing we did on our first training (6 years ago) was to make lists of FOR & AGAINST. Everybody came up with lots more for AGAINST than FOR.

Some examples to think about:-
AGAINST
low income, eg if you're not full
irregular income - parents can move house, change jobs at any time leaving you with no work
being self employed can have a detrimental affect on your credit rating
wear & tear, damage to property
having to deal with business telephone calls & visitors at all hours
work you have to do outside of childminding hours - contracts & paperwork, bookkeeping, advertising, interviewing parents, planning etc
your children have to share you.
your children may not be able to have friends round when you're childminding
your childminding commitments may restrict the after school clubs/activities you can enrole your child in or you may have to decline work that conflicts
dh/dp may resent their home being invaded (by parents as well as the children!)

FOR
being your own boss
planning your own day & changing your plans whenever you like
choosing your working hours
choosing who you want to work with
being paid to play games & clown around
your own children will have lots of playmates/wide range of friends & can learn from spending time with people they might not choose as a friend
getting away from office politics

Thanks for the feedback guys - some great points for me to think about. I think the exhaustion would put me off big time as my baby is currently waking every 2 hours at night, plus not sure if I would want to be childminding while pregnant with #2 which we'll be planning on soon - maybe not such a practical idea after all...

Lucy