Daycare Doubts

So you're not happy with your daycare?
Who's to balme?
Well in my opinion, there's more apathy than integrity when it comes to parenting in this twenty-first century. We can blame the government, who's self-righteous financial transactions are inane and maddening. The very possibility that they even consider foresight in their calculations of where to mete our money means we rarely meet with it. But we can also blame ourselves. And it has nothing to do with being the ones who vote our "representatives" in. The people watching your kids have been taught. But have they been parented?

I've been employed in childcare for almost three years now. I have no degree. I haven't taken any special classes. I have almost single-handedly raised my hearing-impaired son for the past four years. And I do take my job very seriously. I also read... a lot. My resume might not quite stand up to the resume of someone fresh out of university. But I'm telling you now - it doesn't matter a whit. I am a person who knows the significance of my chosen profession: Child - care.
It's not baby-sitting. It's not child-minding. People are spending more time with your children than you are and they were raised by parents too. How your neighbourhood child-care worker interacts with your child is more dependant on how they were raised than by what they've been taught.
Do you care if the people caring for your kids don't seem to have much to say about your children's day? Then say something. I personally don't mind if you're the kind of parent to ask me how Jack did today. If I don't know then I'd better know tomorrow, right? But I will know. Because I care about his development. I care about him. I also know that I really want the same kind of insight from the person that takes care of my own son. It shouldn't be interrogation. I just want a simple acknowledgment of what my kid has been up to for the day. If she can't give me a personalised account then she doesn't know my son. So if Susan can't give you a personalised account of your own son's behaviour for the time she's with him, each day, for a whole week then she's probably not watching him at all.
I'm not trying to make my self look good in the examining eye of "education". I just feel the need to point out the fact that I see a deadening of ambitions when it comes to the enabling of children to become REAL adults.

It is as much OUR problem as it is our daycare's.

Further Reading

We all aspire to help our children learn to read. And in case you're not aware, the surest way to accelerate their abilities is to flex your own ability. Reading is one of the most powerful tools we have to strengthen our brain "muscle". And with the various and impending crises unfolding on the horizon of this dear (and life-giving) planet, we're all gonna have to flex our muscles pretty hard if we want to extract some viable and life-saving solutions.
As some books will state: If you want your child to read on his own; read on your own. Your child needs the ability to teach herself what her school barely alludes to. The ability should reside in the behaviour of you, her parent. So go find some books that reveal unanswered questions you've had in your own head.
The problems that we all face are ours, our children's, our children's children's, and even their children will be affected by our problems. However, the sooner we realise that there's already some scaffolding in place, the more timely and progressed will be the solutions. The scaffolding refers to individuals who are actively sharing their compounded knowledge through books, media, business, and activism itself. The idea is that all of their information will be further refined and expounded upon by us - the readers. It's been happening for millennia, so why stop now? :)

The point of all this: I'm creating a side-bar of some of my favorite books called Further Reading. The list is not in any certain order, but they are all either pertinent, scientific, hopeful, funny, helpful, inspiring, revealing, well-written, and even all of these things together. In verse and in trust, for the benefit of all humankind. Please check some of them out and, belive me, the first one you should buy is The Post-petroleum Survival Guide & Cookbook. It could end up being a textbook by the time your son or daughter is in secondary school ;)