Overnight nursery care, Item on Radio 4 now

[Easy]

Would you leave your child in nursery for 15 hours a day?

Are you talking about the stress of living between two places, NN? Or the stress of daycare? Sorry, I'm not clear as to what you mean.

NN, both me and DP Have to work 12 and 12.5 hr shifts. I am a nurse, and he is a policeman. If DS were in nursery (say I had to be working full time, he would have to be) then probably 15 hrs would be a struggle. My journey time to work is well over an hour. And I frequently get out late. Why is it such a struggle to realise just how different some peoples lives can be?

"Leaving a child 15 hours with granny/grandpa wouldn't be as stimulating all day for them,"

unless you're talking about DS2's godmother - who's 72 - and has grandchildren of her own. She's been over to see us twice in the last couple of weeks, and although she's only stayed 1-2hrs - by the time she leaves my boys are COMPLETELY hyper - and when she looks after them for a couple of hours - OMG - they're completely over stimulated (for them).!

a childminder better though IMO, not so full-on for them.

if you can find a childminder - fantastic........

oh sorry dont want to slag anyone off really, hadn't thought of it that way Floss.

its not as simple as there are plenty of jobs in Londo! It's been a while since I lived there, but I remember the horror of travelling in and out, the cancelled trains, tubes so packed that you can't get on. And when I lived there I had two jobs in order to pay for the basics of life.

At the end of the day people have to do what they have to do to survive. And I'm sure that everyone is thinking of their child all the time and thinking of their future.

qoq - thats different, becaues the children have 2 homes. Its not the same as staying in a hotel or a nursery some nights.

bubble - I mean the stress of living in 2 different places, similar to staying in a hotel during the week and going home at weekends. sorry, I didnt explain very well.

but NN - if it's a regular thing - and it's in the same place each time (ie same nursery - instead of granny tonight, uncle john tomorrow night, babysitter staying over at your own house the following night etc etc) sure it's no different to having two homes.

Surely the point of a nursery is to give the child the support and care they would get instead of the parents - therefore it is their 'home' for when they're there.....

There are excellent nurseries and there are crap nurseries. I would not leave my dog (if I had one) in some of the daycare on offer.

Our nursery is totally unstressful. Particularly after lunch when most of our littlies have a sleep (we have two children who sleep at 10am) There is a three hour stretch when you can hear a pin drop. We do cuddles, stories and trips to feed the ducks, go to the library etc. We are not related to the children but we know them inside out.

floss, my point is that I personally would change my job rather than get into 15 hour nursery shifts for my children, and I cant think offhand of circumstances that would make me not do that.
I chose the career I am doing now, because it is fairly child friendly. I know that everyone is pushed to pay the mortgage, but there are limits and 15 hour nursery shifts is my limit.

Arent long shifts covered by parent friendly legislation? I mean, can parents be forced to work long shifts?

oh how wondeful it would be if we could all just "change jobs" to something that suits us - some people get stuck in jobs, and are unable to find anything else suitable, that would pay the same or more.

qoq - no, a nursery is not the same as a home. at home they can help themselves from the fridge, switch the tv on when they want etc etc etc, whereas at nursery, for the good of everyone, they have to stick to certain standards of behaviour (now I know someone is going to pop up and say "But dont your children stick to certain standards at home?")

we all know that constant business trips and staying in hotels is stressful for adults, why is it different for toddlers? Even if you stay in the same hotel, you'd still rather be at home, wouldn't you??

I agree with you nightynight

no I disagree, there are loads of opportunities to re-train. actually, my profession is full of ex-nurses in search of better hours and pay!

This thread is beginning to sound like a "why do you work when you have kids to look after?" thread. It always astonishes me that in this day and age women are still made to feel guilty about having a career.

Is anyone selling hard hats yet? I'd like a shiny new red one?

Bubble, kids are great. That boy is growing like a weed.... but he's ever so cute! How are yours?

NN, ours would be a choice of putting DS in for two long days, say, or a full working week of short days. I would rather have him at home for 5, maybe even 6 days if we managed to work it cleverly, than have him away from the home as much, much in the way that when I am travelling so far to work I would rather get it out of the way in a few days. I could change my hours, but it would mean changing my job. I found it hard enough to go back to work after mat leave without having to start back in a strange place with a group of strangers. Also, the horrible place where we live has been specifically chosen for two reasons, one, we can afford to, and 2, we can both get to work relatively easily from here. So basically all aspects of our lives would be affected by having to change working hours. Life really isnt just as simple as that.

I'm sorry but I think a child's perception of "stressful" is entirely different to an adults. Of course adults find business trips stressful - but why - I know when I've had to stay away from home (very rarely), the reasons I've found it stressful haven't been because I'm staying somewhere different - rather worrying about things that adults worry about.

I was "shipped" around quite a bit when I was younger, as was DH, and it didn't bother me in the slightest - I was always staying at the same place, with the same people, and didn't have to worry about what my parents were worrying about when I was staying somewhere else.!

"no I disagree, there are loads of opportunities to re-train. actually, my profession is full of ex-nurses in search of better hours and pay!"

come and live here in Wellingborough then - seen what you can find to do within 'set' hours, and being a position of needing to either retrain, or train.......

Why would someone who has studied and worked hard for the career they have want to give that up? I certainly wouldn't, and neither would my DH. Not to mention if I went to retrain while I haeld down the job I need to pay the bills, well then I'd need a 24 hour nursery.

This will sound like outrageous self-promotion, and in fact it may be. I wish you could visit our nursery. We set our nursery up using the 'chain' model as a 'how not to' template. We are open-plan, we don't have closed 'rooms' for age groups, we use partitioned acoustic screens instead. The children can, and often do, come and hang out (supervised) with me in the kitchen, perched on a stool and watching me make lunch. Each child has their own mattress and blanket and we have a huge garden for them to run and play in.

We have one child who had been left with grandma when the parents returned to work, he is 18 months old and both parents have said how much happer he is with us. Grandma (I've met her) is lovely, BTW, but can't clear up the fall-out from foot-painting etc on a daily basis.

Personally I think its a great idea, for those of us who have or have to work shifts, the opportunity of a night nursery eases life greatly, I used to work at an airport and the amount of times staff had to call in due to no one to look after the kids during evening/night/early am shifts as both parents working shifts, this solves the problem! makes life easier for business and parents, which surely promotes Blairs getting everyone back to work scenarios as well!

Bubble, please open a nursery near me

on a general note and without wishing to be personal, it seems to me that 15 hour nursery shifts is a sign of something wrong in society. We should be seeking the right to work more balanced shifts, rather than nurseries that will take our children for ever longer hours at a time.
I am sorry floss, I just can't agree with you that fewer, longer shifts gives a better family life than more, shorter shifts. (That is not a criticism of your parenting choices, it is jusst a different opinion btw)

bubble, I have a lot of experience with nurseries, my chidlren have been to 5 different ones between them, some good and some not so good. I very much appreciated the good nurseries, but I am sorry to say that I still regarded full time nursery care as a second best option to care in our home with a good child carer, although I do think that my children benefitted from socialising with other children.

qoq - I am just sick of not waking up in my own bed I guess!

Hmmm at the risk of repeating what has already been said... I enjoy working and my daughter enjoys nursery. If I had a job where I worked shifts, I would really appreciate a nursery that offered more flexible hours.

I was a SAHM for the first nine months of dd's life and for the past nine months, she's been in nursery 3 or 4 days a week. She's happy when she's dropped off, she's happy there and she's happy when we pick her up. She doesn't spend hours plonked in front of cbeebies (at the risk of sounding like Madonna, 'she doesn't watch tv'!) or being dragged around Tesco's or watching me hoover/cook/clean. At nursery, she has fun and learns a bit as a byproduct of that fun.

Also, sometimes I think the holier-than-thou SAHMs don't appreciate that some of us don't live near family so that is not an option for childcare/babysitting. My parents live in Canada. My in-laws and other members of dh's family live six hours' drive away. I may leave my dd at nursery but I have never been away from her for more than 12 hours - no weekend breaks or nights away for us (not that I would say no to an offer)!