BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Change of career! I’ve always wanted to work with kids and now here’s my chance!

Except, I quit.

Oops.

Kids everywhere! Happy classrooms!

Ugh.

I should have known better from the start. I don’t even want to put my own children if I have them in daycare. I don’t judge those who do (at least I didn’t think I did…) but it’s not for me.

Being in the toddler room with 12 kids and two staff members and no lead teacher trying to keep diapers clean every 2 hours and making sure the kids aren’t pushing each other, tearing up books, throwing blocks, climbing up the sleeping mats, coloring on the tables and floors, hanging off the door-bar…wasn’t exactly what I envisioned for teaching and shaping the minds of our youth. I mean of course I knew this stuff was involved too. But I didn’t realize there wasn’t any time for anything else.

Because of staff ratios the misbehaving kids are the ones that get the most attention. If we were lining up to go outside, which they did every morning and every afternoon…the kid refusing to stand in line and behave ultimately got to be HELD by a teacher because we all needed to go outside. Talk about reinforcing bad behavior! When one of the kids acted out or did something wrong there were no timeouts…which meant no consequences for their actions. But the way teachers got around the no time out rule ended up being…the kids with bad behaviors had to sit next to the teachers or hold their hands. Which makes something that inherently should be a good reward…holding the teacher’s hand…into a punishment instead.

I want to study early childhood education…I just don’t think I want to apply the knowledge to anything outside of my own little world of children. Perhaps with in-home childcare someday? Corporate daycare is just not for me.

So now what do I do? Where do I go? I hate that I made a big proclamation that turned out to be…a big fat nothing in the end. The admitting defeat part is not easy, especially at the hands of a dozen toddlers.