Childminder - not sure what to do?

[xxholr5xx]

Hi,

Our eldest boy is 3 and has been with his childminder since he has been 6 months old. She is our neighbour who we got to know through the pandemic and highly recommended. Our son has never been the most settled child at drop offs but he always seems to enjoy his day. Since the new term has started he has been going to Welsh nursery in the morning 3 days a week to which his childminder takes him and picks him up.

Since then, our son has started to test boundaries slightly. His new trick is to push his twin brothers over (17 months) to see what reaction he gets. He’s also started doing it at his childminders. We fully reprimand him when he behaves in this way (I’m a preschool teacher myself) but the problem is the way in which the childminder speaks about our son at the end of the day. She uses phrases like ‘it’s one step forward, two steps back, he’s been difficult today, he’s been tantrumming’ which if I used in my workplace I would be pulled in for speaking in this way. Today our son waved to his childminder across the road and she said ‘we weren’t friends yesterday were we?’ to our son which he got visibly upset by and he now doesn’t want to go tomorrow. Should I be annoyed by her comments even though I understand his behaviour is unacceptable?

TIA. 😀

'He's been difficult' and 'he's been having tantrums' are just facts aren't they? They're the facts about how he's been that day. Do you want her to lie? Or just not tell you?

'One step forward, two steps back' is quite negative, but again if that's her feeling about the situation with his behaviour she can only tell you the truth.

'We weren't friends yesterday' is unhelpful. She shouldn't be bringing up past bad behaviour to shame him when he's waving/saying hi. That's bad practise. Can you try talking to her? Otherwise maybe look into increasing his nursery hours now he's older.

I think I’m more annoyed at the language she uses and the tone she comes across in particularly when it’s all said right in front of my son. In every childcare job I’ve ever worked in we’ve always been trained to speak to parents in a certain way and always say something positive about the day which I know he does have as she has to upload pictures of his day into his portal and he always seems happy in those and happily talks about his day when he gets home, even if I’ve left him crying in the morning for me.

He’s not a massive fan of his nursery and not completely settled there for his morning sessions and to do an afternoon session is with different staff members in a different building 🙈

So is it that you’d like the childminder to sugar coat what she is saying?

It is pretty poor.

MN insist otherwise but it is a completely normal developmental stage. Not all children go through it, just as not all have sleep regressions, not all go through a ‘fussy’ stage, not all go through a clingy stage, but it’s very normal. A childminder who doesn’t seem to be aware of this - which from the language seems to be the case - isn’t one I would be totally comfortable with. It’s hard if you have few other options though.

Inform her you are implementing some techniques to improve your sons behavior and you would appreciate it if she would talk to you without him present when she feels she needs to communicate something negative.

If he's happy at the childminders then I'd keep him there. I wouldn't have moved my child based on what you've put.

Our nursery always did what DP calls the shit sandwich - something good that happened, something bad that happened, something good that happened. And the next day was always a clean slate. The "we weren't friends" comment on a different day I think is unfair to your DC.

I think I'd probably raise it - that you're happy to hear the bad, but it would be nice for your child for the last thing said to be one of the good things that happened?