Child Care Tips

  • Help children make the transition to child care by starting slowly and getting support from child care educators.
  • Ease children into new routines, and make sure they have enough attention, rest and quiet play at home.
  • A good relationship with early childhood educators can help children settle in.
  • Spend time with your child’s early childhood educators
  • Use detailed communication books
  • Talk with your child’s educator about how u expect your child to behave – let them know what strategies you use to manage your child behavior and ask them to share what works for them. 
  • Communicate openly about any trauma your child has experienced, if you can
  • Share basic words in your child’s home language with the educators – for example, words for sleep, eat, stop, hello, goodbye.
  • Explain any customs for eating, dressing or behaviour that might affect your child’s activities at child care.
  • Offer to lend the service cultural items that help your child feel welcome – for example, traditional toys, books in your home language, woven or dyed cloth from your culture, or inexpensive cooking utensils to use in home corner.

Battles to pick with your children

  • The Reading Battle  – make your kids read.. make it fun, incorporate songs and dances that are both educational and entertaining. Reading is tied to everything from cognitive development to the ability to focus. Make your kids read daily. 
  • The Outside Battle –  Make your kids go outside.. at least for a few minutes or an hour or two per day. The natural world teaches us many lessons. Plus the sunshine, fresh air and exercise helps with growth. Most importantly nature is filled with peace and joy. 
  • The Work Battle –  Make children work… There are priceless life principles you can learn only with cleaning tools. Let sweat be the teacher but like most things in order to get cooperation, make it fun. 
  • The Meal Battle –  Make your kids eat as a family. Our lives are a blur of incessant activity. Meals together are a physical pause to recover a truth so easily sacrificed at the altar of busyness. Bonding as a family is important- eat together. 
  • The Boredom Battle –  Make your kids live with boredom. Do not show a dvd on each car ride. Kids need unscheduled time. Boredom is a skill, it is hard as a parent to deal with the assault of boredom complaints but if you give in and fill up their time with external stimuli, you will raise an activity addict. make them learn that at times it is okay to just BE. 
  • The “Me-First” Battle –  Make your kids go last. Not every time for everything but enough to remind them that the world does not revolve around them. Take the smallest piece, give up the remote, do someone else’s chores. Sometimes they need to get their least favorite choice- they will not like it BUT THEY NEED IT.  
  • The Awkward Conversation Battle – THIS IS MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT BATTLE.. make it easy for your children to have uncomfortable conversations with you,, sex, daring, body image, values etc. Your kids will roll their eyes and resist. You will stumble and stutter but they need and want your perspective, lessons learned and wisdom. be a teacher and a student in this case. 
  • The Limitation Battle –  Learning to live with limits is a valuable life skill, in fct, many adult problems arise from an inability to accept them. Screen time limits, dietary limits,activity limits, and schedule limits are all good.