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05-21-2007, 12:44 PM
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Actually, I only specifically said "America" because I have personal experience there. Conditions may be the same or even worse in countless other countries - however, I can`t say as I don`t have any personal experience with daycares there. The nightmare experience I had? The daycare my brother went to (during the time my mother actually let me go to school) was run by a crack addict who locked the kids in one room all day. She was licensed. No one reported her because a) Her care was dirt cheap and b) she would give everyone drug discounts. I think you can guess what type of children she was watching. 
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Child care -
05-21-2007, 06:42 PM
In America, our consumerist culture pushes both mother and father to work, except for the rather well off. Poor folks work to make ends meet, middle class works to have just a little bit more…whatever it is they think they need. Thus, is the need for childcare created, even for very young children. Poor folks often have a network of friends and family that share the chore of caring for a group of children (as is the case in the rural community in which I teach.
My wife and I had very differing views of daycare. My early life was split between daycare and my grandparent’s home; in her life, her mom quit work to raise three children, as did her sister-in-law. When our kids were born, she took off the maximum allowed time off (3 to 4 months). As a teacher, I take care of the kids after school, and for almost two months off in the summer. My kids are in a daycare run by the school system for which I work, so I feel very confident about it. When we were looking, however, we did go to a few places that were only slightly above a crack house; one was run out of a family’s basement and the other out of an old convenience store; there were very few windows and I didn’t want to leave the kids in a cave!
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05-22-2007, 08:57 AM
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If everyone took a step back and really thought about where their money was going and what they could do to live a better life, a lot fewer people would be in the type of situations they are in. This doesn`t really apply to truly poor people - those who can barely scrape by at all - but with the middle class, I have come to believe that intelligence is one of the largest divisions between leading a comfortable life and not. I have seen people (in the US, mind you) who make far MORE than my husband does a year... Who are in credit card debt up to their necks, and who can`t seem to find enough money to fill the refrigerator, let alone buy new electronics... Whereas we are leading an extremely comfortable life, and have even bought a very nice condo. Debt? Only our mortgage. It is really a mystery to me. Back to the subject of daycare - My son has never been in daycare. We went around to a few here when we were thinking about the preschool programs a lot of them offer. I`m not working, or at least not enough to actually NEED daycare, so we`re not eligible for the city-run nurseries. My son has had a lot of serious medical problems, and is quite behind in his development, so we were advised that he may benefit from a "structured" environment when he has a lot of chances to interact with other children... They were all impeccably clean, and had full licensed staff (as in people who graduated from a real childcare training school), and were generally all very nice. The main differences were where the children spent their outdoor play time. One place had a large terrace, one had a huge yard, another had a large balcony, and another took the children to the park. And these were the low-cost end of the scale. I can`t possibly imagine the type of daycares that exist in the US ever existing here.
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Special needs -
05-22-2007, 03:17 PM
Nyororin,
What sorts of problems does your child have? I ask from proffessional curiosity; I am a special education teacher, and many of my students have congenital problems, though others seem to have problems stemming from their environment. When I was on a train in Japan last year, I saw a person with a congenital condition. I found it odd that on his backpack he had a sign that was a sort of warning to others about him. I almost snapped a picture of it, but I thouhght that it would have been terriblely rude, since I couldn't ask permission first.
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05-22-2007, 04:25 PM
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My son had a severe left hemispherical stroke just prior to birth due to my placenta quite literally dying. He was receiving just enough oxygen to survive, but waste was not being carried out. He was born weighing 14 oz, and was in intensive care for 5 months. His genitalia were also not developed (in fact, we had to have a blood test to determine gender.) He has a growth disorder, and a malfunction in the sleep-wake center of his brain - his body doesn`t register fatigue properly so doesn`t produce a proper balance of sleep hormones. He has an enlarged heart, and hardened lungs. The stroke destroyed around half of the brain tissue in the left hemisphere, so he has a big "hole" there now. That`s about it. As for developmental levels, he is about the size of an 18 month old and behaves like a 24 month old... He is going to turn 3 next month. The biggest bottleneck right now is that he has no speech. Not a single word. He is very vocal, very expressive, and has decent comprehension, just no real words. If he were to begin speaking, our doctor believes he may actually be closer to a normal level than we think - there is a point where the tests require verbal skills. He fails them miserably (of course!). Nothing congenital here - just bad luck, I suppose. Or good, if you look at it from the other side. We were told to expect him to be dead at birth. He wasn`t. We were then told to expect him to die. He didn`t. Later when he was finally able to leave the hospital, we were told to expect seizures and cerebral palsy. He has neither.
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My Own Experience -
05-29-2007, 06:51 PM
Dear Nyororin,
One of the main problem that several of my students have. Of the four that I had this past year, only one could speak (he was also the only one that came to me toilet trained). Have you tried sign language with your son? --Michael
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05-30-2007, 04:40 AM
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That has improved significantly in the past couple of months, so we`re also hoping it carries over into his oral motor skills. He has no problem babbling or being vocal, it`s just words themselves that stump him. Just out of curiousity, what sort of age range are he children you work with? My son is still technically 2 years and 8 months. We`ve started toilet training, but because he doesn`t tell me when he has to go until after he`s already gone, it is a bit of an uphill battle.
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my class -
05-30-2007, 02:35 PM
Regular pre-K in Tennessee is for kids that turn four years old before the end of September. For my special education class, a child is eligible when s/he turns three. This past year, my youngest student joined my class when he turned three in March, my oldest turned five last November. Children are refered to my program by their pediatrician when he judges him/her to be "at risk", that is, short of their developmental milestones.
Your son is not really behind with toilet training; boys start later and take longer; my oldest son, now almost 12, was more than three years. My daughter, now 3 1/2, was completely trained at 26 months. My youngest son, 20 months, is just starting to give signals that he is wet, and we have to be looking for those signals to notice. If your boy is actually letting you know by getting your attention, you are doing well. Incidently, since my wife and I are raising ours bilingual, initial onset of language is later, but once they start, (or in the case of the girl, when she started), they catch up quickly. Feel free to see my family at www.myspace.com/xrayagent.
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