Saying Goodbye

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Miss Faith

Dear Miss Faith, I am a working mom (though I would much rather be a stay at home mom, it’s not financially possible at this time), and my Mother-in-Law cares for my 2yo son each day. Lately, when she’s been leaving, he’s been falling apart completely. Do you have any suggestions for how to make “parting with grandma” easier? Yesterday he had a total meltdown. From the kitchen, I heard her tell him “I will be right back”…which made me cringe, because I do NOT like lying to children about things like that. Looking back, I wish I had tried “validating” more, by saying “you’re sad that grandma is leaving, i’m sad too”.. etc… but he was instant-hysterical and it’s so hard to calmly talk with him when he’s like that. Not to mention, it just doesn’t *feel* like he understands or is even listening when I am trying to use ‘validating’ words to him. I would love any words of encouragement you could offer. Continue reading →

A Case Against the Toy Chest

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Miss Faith

You might be wondering what anyone could have against a toy chest. Isn’t that an integral part of childhood? Well, my argument starts with the idea that there are only two things that ever happen with a toy chest: 1) Everything gets dumped out onto the floor, or 2) It is ignored. I guess there’s a third thing which happens, which is: 3) Mom or dad puts everything back in the toy chest at the end of the day and shuts the lid.

Instead of having a toy chest where everything gets hidden at the end of the day, my suggestion is to set up several play-areas in your house with little ‘scenes,’ where when everything is put away, it looks inviting and beautiful. Toys are displayed in a way that makes you think, “The only thing missing is the kid!”

Why Ditch the Toy Chest? Here’s why: Continue reading →

Imaginative Journeys for Mundane Tasks

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Miss Faith

Redbird tells each child to put
his cloth in the bowl

Dear Miss Faith,
I’ve never before had children that regularly made a fuss but at the moment I look after two brothers (just turned 3 and 4) that get upset about washing hands, having nappies (diapers) changed and having shoes put on. I always give them warning (ie. in a few minutes we can wash our hands so that we will be ready to prepare our snack) give them a choice of helping to do it themselves or I can do it and try to keep things positive and fun but quite often none of it works. I hate having to force them to do things when they get upset but these are things that really need to be done so im not sure what else to do. If you can think of any ideas that might help us I would be grateful!
Thank you, Karen

Hi Karen,

If the children were smaller (say, between 1 and 3), I’d suggest doing less talking. A child who refuses to put on his shoes when you tell him, is often fine if you simply take him by the hand and start putting on his shoes without talking about it. Especially if you are talking about something else that’s interesting, instead. However, your boys are older, and that probably won’t work with them. So, there are a couple of things to do.

Continue reading →

Starting Daycare and Saying Goodbye

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Miss Faith

Dear Miss Faith,

My little guy is starting daycare and while I’m sure that it will be a wonderful, loving place for him, I am dreading dropping him off and saying goodbye. We have had a hard time with babysitters lately. Do you have any advice for helping it go smoothly?

Dear Mama,

Yes! I have helped many families adjust to saying goodbye for the first time, and what I’ve seen is this: the thing that makes the most difference for a child is the parent’s attitude. When a parent feels bad that a child is crying, and lingers as a result, children often continue crying for a long time, even after the parent has managed to drag herself away. I think that when a parent does this, the message she is sending is, “I don’t want to leave you here, but I have to.” The way the child interprets this is, “Mom doesn’t want to leave me here; I AM NOT SAFE HERE.”

The biggest gift you can give your child is to say, with every ounce of your being, “I am leaving you in the best of hands.” You don’t have to say this out loud; transmit it through your actions, through your attitude. This doesn’t mean that you don’t acknowledge his feelings: it’s hard to watch you leave! You can be compassionate without feeling guilty for causing the grief. “I know that saying goodbye is hard, AND I know that you’ll have a good time while I’m gone. I love you so much, and I am leaving you in the best of hands.”

But what if I AM feeling guilty? It is heart-wrenching to walk away when my little one is crying his heart out and reaching out to me.

Continue reading →

When I’m Low Energy

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Miss Faith

Lavender Foot-Baths

When I am in full health, and have gotten enough sleep, I LOVE my time with children. But when I don’t get enough sleep, or I have a headache, or a cold, or medicine is making me groggy, the amount of energy it takes to care for children just seems beyond my capabilities. And yet there they are, as rambunctious as ever.

Take Care of Miss Faith Day
On days when I feel wiped out, I implement “Take Care of Miss Faith” days. I lower the lights. I pull the curtains. When the children come in, I tell them in a soft voice, “Today’s gong to be a quiet day. Today will be a day when YOU take care of ME!” I lie down on the couch, or in the cozy corner that’s loaded with lambskins and cushions. The children bring over blankets and silks and ‘tuck me in.’ They bring over the dollies and tuck them in with me. They bring over books, and we take turns where they read one to me, then I’ll read one to them. We play the kinderharp. We brush hair and give lavender foot-baths. We drink warm chamomile tea. Take Care of Miss Faith days are days for snuggling, and they are sweet and soft. I talk more softly, more slowly than usual. Things I normally do myself, I ask the children to do for me, and they love to rise to the occasion.

When I first started implementing these days, it was when I had a migraine, or a close relative was seriously ill. It seemed that the children could sense that I really needed some quiet space, and extra care. Even the littlest ones were more quiet than usual. But then I thought, Why not have these days a little more often? The children are clearly capable of doing it when it’s needed, and they seem to benefit from it as much as I do. So I started having these “quiet days” more often. If it was a really rainy day, we’d turn it into a quiet day. If we had a cold snap and we hadn’t been able to play outside in five days, we’d have a quiet day. If four parents said their kids were grumpy or sleep deprived at drop-off, we’d have a quiet day. I’d try to do them often enough that the children would remember them, but infrequently enough that they remained unusual and special. About once a month seemed good.

The reality is that these days still take quite a lot of energy on my part. I can’t just “check out” and let the kids run things themselves; that tends to result in chaos. Instead, I have to use my energy to create this cozy, intimate atmosphere. If a child forgets and becomes loud, I’ll remind them that “today is a quiet day,” and if they can’t tone it down, I’ll say, “if you need to be loud, I’d like you to do it in the other room. Today is a day where I need quiet around me.” Because these days are so snuggly and so special, most children would rather tone it down than be left out of the special atmosphere. But even though they still take energy (I’m still running the show, I’m just running a different show from normal), I find it to be restful and rejuvenating, and the children do, too. Those who need extra cuddling get as many cuddles as they need, and those who wish they were a little bigger get the chance to stand tall and really help on a whole new level. And I get to spend significant chunks of time in a semi-horizontal position, drinking tea and having children love all over me.

Warmly,
Miss Faith

End of Meal Transition

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Miss Faith

Dear Miss Faith,
I run a small home daycare, and a difficult time for me is clearing the table after a meal. Do you have the kids clear their bowls or empty extra food into the compost?  My children excuse themselves when finished and leave their items on the table to be cleared and then washed by myself and any child who wants to help. I’d like to have a clearing/composting process, but the sink is often not ready for dishes, and we do the dishes in wash tubs on the table anyway….any suggestions? I’d love to know what you do with your children.
Thanks so much, Jennifer
Dear Jennifer,
   There are lots of different things you can do to help smooth things out at the end of a meal. At Rainbow Bridge, we do things differently at the end of lunch than we do for the snack after naptime, for example. Lunch is the big meal of the day that is also a social time, so everyone stays at the table while the candle is lit, until the meal is done. At the end of the meal I’ll sing, “Last little nibbles,” then “Last sips of water.” I’ll blow out the candle and put washtubs on the table, and children put their bowls, cups and spoons in the washtubs. Then I pass out a wet warm washcloth to each child, and we play a fun little game with wiping our hands, faces, and the table in front of us. One game that the children love is “questions,” where we all hold the washcloths up against our mouths, and the children suggest questions for me to ask. The answer to these questions is always “no,” so everyone shakes their heads while holding the cloths still, effectively wiping their mouths. Questions range from “Will we wear our bathing suits to play out in the snow?” to “Is my house made of cheese?” Then cloths go in a bowl and children push their chairs in. A washcloth for each child definitely increases the laundry load, but it’s well worth it in my opinion.
   When my mom is in charge of a meal, she excuses each child by bringing out Redbird (a wool bird on a string, held by a stick), and children make a ‘nest’ with their hands for redbird to land in. Once Redbird lands in a child’s ‘nest’ he may leave the table.
   When I worked at Boulder Waldorf Kindergarten, children scraped their bowls into the compost before they put them in a washtub. This was a fairly energy-intensive activity for the adults, and success depends on having a good traffic pattern from the table to the compost bucket to the washtub. The compost bucket also can’t be too small!
   For the snack after naptime, things are much looser. Children eat as they wake up, and when they are done they take their bowls to the counter and go into the playroom to play. If they’ve spilled (it’s usually apple sauce or yoghurt) they get a cloth and wipe it up.
   So, there are different ways to do it, and different meals can have different levels of formality. Since your children are excused from the table as they finish, it seems they could easily take their bowls to the counter, or to a washtub if the counter is too high. I knew one LifeWays caregiver who had very little ones. She would excuse them one by one and have them come stand in front of her, and she would wipe their face and brush off their clothes before they left the eating area. It was a fairly slow process, but the children clearly enjoyed getting that snippet of direct personal attention.
   I hope these ideas get your creative juices flowing, and good luck!
Warmly,
Miss Faith

Potty at Daycare

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Miss Faith

If you work taking care of other people’s toddlers, then you are an integral part of the potty-learning process. Having several toddlers together gives you some advantages over parents, but it also presents some unique challenges.

Advantages
The main advantage you have is that young children learn through imitation. At Rainbow Bridge I’ll usually take two or three children who are potty-learning to the bathroom at once, and it’s quite a social experience. We have a kiddie-potty on the floor, facing the full-sized toilet that has a wide foot-stool in front of it and an extra kid-sized seat that’s attached to the toilet and opens and closes (see an example here). If I had room in the bathroom I’d put another kiddie-potty, but the bathroom is too small. Still, two children can go to the potty at once, while a third kid stands next to me or sits on my lap (I sit on the stool in front of the sink).

At first, I’ll help the children through every process: pulling down their pants, taking off their diaper, sitting on the potty, getting toilet paper, getting a new diaper, pulling up pants, washing and drying hands. As they get more and more experienced, I’ll let them do as much as they can on their own, until I get to the point where I say, “I bet you can do this all on your own now! This time, I won’t even go into the bathroom with you. I’ll just watch from here.” And I’ll stand in the hallway outside the bathroom door, saying “Are you really going to do this all by yourself today? I can hardly believe it! But look at that! You pulled your pants down by yourself. Maybe you WILL be able to do it all on your own.” If they need some help, I encourage them to ask for it (“you can say, ‘help please!’), but usually they can get it on their own, and I’m super proud of them. After a few times of doing that, when it’s time for them to go potty I’ll send them to the bathroom on their own, then I’ll wait a few minutes before I go and see how they’re doing.

In a group care setting, I’ll also sometimes ask a bigger kid who’s completely diaper-free to take a younger child who’s just learning and show them how they go potty. I go with them and supervise the whole thing, but I try to stay in the background a bit and only step in as needed. This can be a very sweet process: the bigger kid feels so competent, and the littler kid feels so special.

Disadvantages
However, there are also some significant disadvantages to potty-learning in groups. The most significant is that if you are working on your own, you have many children to supervise and can’t spend all of your time in the bathroom, especially if it is far away from your livingroom/play space. If that’s the case, you might consider making a “potty corner” with play-stands or two dressers in a corner of your play-room, or you can just tell parents that their child will have to wait until they’re diaper-free to go potty at your house. You have to do what works for you in your house.

Another serious disadvantage is that children tend to have more accidents at daycare because they’re having so much fun playing with their friends that they don’t want to leave, or they don’t realize they need to go until it’s too late because things are so exciting. I’ve had parents who claim that their children are completely diaper-free at home, but they have accidents all the time at my house. In those cases I work with the parents as I can, but if it gets to be too much the child can arrive at my house diaper-free, but once they have an accident or if they can’t pee in the potty when I take them, they’ll need to wear a diaper for the rest of the day at my house. When their parent comes to pick them up, they can take the diaper off before they leave. As long as the child puts the diaper on and takes it off again while still at my house, they rarely back-slide at home.

And thirdly, children are often having so much fun playing that they refuse to go potty when it’s time. For those children, I’ll either try to take them when there’s a transition going on anyhow, like right after a meal or right when we come inside (so they’re not immersed in play yet), or I’ll say, “Jack, it’s time to go potty soon. Do you want to go now, or will you go after Anna?” He usually chooses to go after Anna, so I’ll tell Anna, “Anna, run to the potty and when you get back, tell Jack that’s it’s his turn.” I’ll remind Jack once while she’s gone that as soon as Anna’s back it will be his turn, and when she tells him, then off we go together, no discussion. This method is usually quite successful. I really like this method of having one child tell the other when they’re done for fully diaper-free kids as well, as it helps the kids learn to listen to each other.

The main thing if you are a childcare provider is to do what feels good to you. I love potty-learning because it’s a great time for me to get some one-on-one or one-on-two time with the kids, and it’s great to watch them as they gain the skills and become more and more competent. But I also always have at least one or even two other adults with me! So if taking children to the potty seems like just one more thing than you can handle, I think it’s perfectly alright to have other ways to bond with the children.