I'm Tired of Waiting For My Own FCC Home

[Abigail]

I'm starting to get tired of not having my own home to do childcare in. I want to do things "my way", but I can't because I'm an employee in someone else's childcare. I don't like foam mats and that is our entire floor. Yesterday I was late for an appointment (still had to pay full price, yet spent half the time at the appointment for physical therapy!) because I was tearing apart four mats to clean urine that went through them from an "accident".

I also want to have different shelves and baby gates and the whole works, , so I better keep on dreaming right?! :: Today I decided I was going to sanitize all the potato heads pieces and put the large ones away since we had two baskets full of them + accessories. Now we have ONE nicely filled basket with 5 small potato heads and many extras and we all sat at the table for nearly 20 minutes making up our own characters. Before they were only mouthed by everyone and they didn't even know how to put they eyes or any pieces into the potato because they were simply a chew toy. I'm so happy we had a breakthrough and learned how to use some toys correctly.

Tomorrow during nap or during play I'm going to go through all the little action figures and cars to check for almost-broken and downsize those as well. The kids love lining the cars up like they're in a parking lot (maybe they all shop at Walmart, :, but they don't need 50 cars. Ever have those "need for clean" days like me? I'm just waiting for my day to move into a house and have my own personal family child care home. Please come soon! I'm tired of waiting!

[melskids]

i totally understand.....

i worked in a center for awhile, and i hated it. they had some really crappy practices, but even the stuff that wasnt SO bad, i didnt like just cause it wasnt how i would do it, ya know? and anything i wanted to do, even above and beyond, was shot down, so why bother trying?

but yeah....even in my home, i like to have alot of choices, but sometimes i have a clean-out day to re-organize.

i must have 10,000 duplos, and we're getting tired of picking them up. i'm thinking i could cut that amount in HALF or even 1/3, and they would still have plenty of blocks to build with.

[Blackcat31]

I hear you too! That is why I am self-employed now.... because I used to work for Head Start and found myself feeling the same way you do.... It is nice to have things done the way you want them to be and that is probably the number #1 reason home childcare providers stay in business.

Please don't take this the wrong way but, I do want to mention that there is no "correct" way to play with any toy. Children should be allowed to do as they please with them and we should never limit them to playing with something in a manner in which adults decide.

Unless, however, a child is not the right age to have it....as you said they only chewed on the pieces.

The chewing tells me that the children were too young for Mr. Potato Heads. (they are rated for age 2 and up)

[MsMe]

I hear you too! That is why I am self-employed now.... because I used to work for Head Start and found myself feeling the same way you do.... It is nice to have things done the way you want them to be and that is probably the number #1 reason home childcare providers stay in business.

Please don't take this the wrong way but, I do want to mention that there is no "correct" way to play with any toy. Children should be allowed to do as they please with them and we should never limit them to playing with something in a manner in which adults decide.

Unless, however, a child is not the right age to have it....as you said they only chewed on the pieces.

The chewing tells me that the children were too young for Mr. Potato Heads. (they are rated for age 2 and up)

YES YES YES

As someone who was raised by a Mother that only allowed me to play with things the 'right' way even coloring books (sun is always yellow grass is always green and only use 'real' hair colors for the people)! I have nearly zero creativity. As long as the toy is age approprate you should allow a child to play with a toy in any (safe) manner they choose.

[melskids]

i'm sure thats what she meant...about using them "correctly"

as in "playing with them without chewing on them"

at least...thats how i understood it.

[Abigail]

I hear you too!
Unless, however, a child is not the right age to have it....as you said they only chewed on the pieces.

The chewing tells me that the children were too young for Mr. Potato Heads. (they are rated for age 2 and up)

We have the 2, 3, and 4 years old chew on them. They put everything in their mouth and I want to take things away and start over so they learn not to mouth toys, but it's not my personal business. Guess we'll just continually clean and continually pickup toys all day.

i'm sure thats what she meant...about using them "correctly"

as in "playing with them without chewing on them"

at least...thats how i understood it.

Using toys correctly, I meant they didn't know how to put the pieces into the potato head until we all sat at the table and I started to build one and everyone else did. I let them be creative by all means and be silly. I only put one piece in (arm where the hair goes, for example) so they could see the pieces really DO connect. They had a blast and I enjoyed watching them use a toy the right way....instead of chewing. I don't care if they had a potato will all eyes, it's the point of connecting the pieces and now chewing on them.

As for having 50 cars and dumping, everything has become a dumping game lately and I think have 2 cars available per child of age to use them is plenty, so about 16-20 at the most....clean up would be so much easier and still give them options! I'm just still really excited to open my own daycare. I don't dislike my job by any means, it's just frustrating. I also go above and beyond when no one else will besides the owner. I would love to stay behind daily to clean too, .

[nannyde]

I wrote a blog about our "rules of play"

https://www.daycare.com/nannyde/there-is-no-correct-way-to-play-with-any-toy.htm

[Abigail]

I'm just waiting for my day to move into a house and have my own personal family child care home. Please come soon! I'm tired of waiting!

May 10 post and Sept 15 got a house....if I only knew it was 4 months away! Such a relief and a new chapter in my life.......business owner

[SilverSabre25]

Congratulations!!! I remember what a wonderful feeling it was to get our house!

We started looking in March (March 30th) of '09 and at the end of April I remember saying, "Well, maybe our house just isn't on the market yet."

It turned out to be true and "our" house went on the market at the beginning of October--was only only the market 24 hours before we'd made an offer and we closed the day before Thanksgiving!

[Abigail]

We must be in the same size of town. After two months of watching online houses that came on the market and viewing about 30 at random during our first week searching it was stressful like the perfect home wasn't available.

Our situation was different. Our home was on the market but it didn't meet our search criteria! We only wanted to look at 4 bedrooms and it had 3 bedrooms with a 4th unfinished, so they listed it as a 3 bedroom and for months we never went over to look.

When we were exhausted not finding the perfect home we decided if the square footage was large enough we could put up a wall to make a 4 bedroom and this was the first 3 bedroom we saw that day and fell in love! We saw other 3 bedrooms during our first week and decided to drop that option because none had room for a 4 room and none had the unfinished 4 room like this one did. So happy we waited and found this!