We have recently been sharing some blog posts related to the chilly reception our particular type of business receives in our city. This has all been news to us in recent weeks, as the topic of expanding our businesses has been at the forefront of our minds because we have blissfully gone along for a couple of years feeling that our neighbors have a relatively positive view of the work that we do. Our childcare participates in community events and when the holidays come around we have even gone caroling and handed out hot cocoa. We are so fortunate to operate our home-based business in an area where people are supportive, friendly, and give us the freedom to allow our toddlers to play drums in the yard. We have only recently learned that our city as a whole is fairly opposed to family childcare.
We have both worked in the field of early education for enough years to not be shocked that our work garners little respect from those who fail to understand what it is we do. As preschool teachers, we experienced the stigma from those who do not value the hearts and minds of young children. We heard comments about how lucky we were to be able to “play all day,” to say nothing of the curriculum planning, intentional brain development, conscious socio-emotional support, and myriad other responsibilities we balanced. “Do you ever think about being a real teacher?” we were asked.
As infant and toddler teachers for the Conejo Valley Unified School District, the lack of respect only deepened as even our own co-workers and fellow educators imagined our work to be that of “professional diaper changers,” while they knew that we completed the same ongoing authentic development assessments and lesson plans that they did. Somehow the diminutive size and subjective “cuteness” of our students meant that we too were to be patted on the head.
When we decided to open a home-based childcare business, our fate was really sealed because we were quickly relegated to the least-respected category of “daycare workers.”
True confession: we too carry negative misconceptions about “home daycare” and “daycare workers.” We have worked very hard for many years, through education and experience, to uplift the profession of early childhood. We have a tendency to look down on those who fail to uphold certain standards within our field. We have some understanding of where the stigma and judgment come from because we read the headlines and hear the anecdotal accounts every day of lower-quality childcare experiences. Despite our own human shortcomings, we know that we cannot support others in the field without coming from a position of empathy. We also know the reality from inside our profession: bad teachers exist at every level. Professionalism doesn’t begin based on the age of one’s students. Laziness and poor pedagogy are a stain on the entire field but they are the exception, not the rule. Here is the hard truth in Conejo Valley and the United States as a whole: administrators who don’t know what they don’t know are a plague on education, particularly in the earliest years of children’s lives.
Research from John Hopkins School of Education shows that the lack of respect for early education is one of the sources of stress that is driving teachers out of the field. This is part and parcel of the childcare crisis facing our community: if we cannot hire and retain qualified professionals, who will care for and educate the nation’s children?
What we call childcare matters. We all know that the issue is so much bigger than that, however. HOW WE VIEW CHILDREN matters. Early childhood matters. Early experiences matter. How we talk TO and ABOUT children matters. It matters from parents, from professionals, and from society. We are bombarded every day by messages that say explicitly and implicitly that early childhood is of no value. We tell one another this. We tell children this.
At Nature’s Explorers, we devote our days to active engagement and play. We are in the trenches of early childhood. Are we professional diaper changers? YOU BET. Do we delight in rocking a sleepy baby, laughing with toddlers, and resting under a tree on a breezy day? We sure do. Our work is wonderful and fulfilling and sometimes deeply restorative. It’s also hard. Taxing. Physically and emotionally demanding. Non-stop. Undervalued, underappreciated, and underpaid.
So we also devote our days to advocacy. We devote ourselves to building up our profession in myriad ways: we host student teachers from Moorpark College and California State University Channel Islands so that we can encourage others to embark on this work and to do it the right way. We are active in the California Association for the Education of Young Children, the affiliate of the National Association for the Education of Young Children so that we can be on the cutting edge of what’s happening in early childhood from government policy to classroom practice. We do our best to keep up with local, national, and global trends in early childhood. We read about the brain, about pedagogy, and we follow the good and bad news coming out about “daycare” every day.
Most recently, we talk about what’s wrong within our City and State when it comes to owning the kind of business that we do. We talk about the crisis our industry is in because we don’t live in a bubble and we cannot stick our heads in the sand. Whether you have young children or not, what happens to the children in our community matters to you because they are the future.
We need to confront the “daycare” stigma head-on and encourage society to understand the work that needs doing as well as the work that is being done. We will open the doors of our business to you: what are you curious about when it comes to in-home childcare? Comment below, send us an email, or catch us on Twitter or Facebook and ask us anything about what we do all day! (We find most people are curious about/jealous of “naptime" so let’s see if that holds true. The second-most popular inquiry we receive is what it’s like to operate this business with a partner.) We will compile your curiosities into a blog post.