A Man in Child Care

1. Knowing you are making a difference in young lives

2. Unlimited hugs and smiles

3. After retirement, at the nursing home, you will know over 300 craft projects to make from empty toilet tissue rolls.

4. If you live near your work, you’ll know the future generations of  newspaper deliverers, cashiers etc.

5. When insomnia strikes, you alone can recite pages of statutory regulations until you nod off from sheer boredom.

6. An encyclopaedic knowledge of Ben Ten, the Ninky Nonks, Fifi, Peppa Pig, Thomas the Tank Engine etc etc.

7. Having a ready repertoire that include s over 100 children’s stories, songs, and fingerplays.

8. Your abilities include plumbing skills… i.e., you’ve never met a toilet you couldn’t unclog.

9. The first to know when the current flu epidemic hits.

10. Having beautiful, young children in your life Monday through Friday, but your evenings and weekends are free! (unless you babysit – see previous post)

Just to keep our hand in this past weekend, we babysat our friends’ wonderful and very precious twin boys. It was mum and dad’s first time away without them. Thankfully they had a great time and so did we. It has been many years since our eldest 2 were baby twins and we did have a renewed appreciation of how tiring it can be – lots of nappies, feeds etc. but the boys were absolutely lovely.

As one of my colleagues says, when promoting the role of men in early years, the question should be what are the benefits for men, not just what are the benefits for children. It really is a privilege to be involved in the lives of children and great fun. 

Produced a new A5 leaflet today on safeguarding children guidance for visitors. I was pleased with the results. Ok, so I pinched most of the contents from our local school but I did adapt it for us. I think Ofsted might like it.

It’s a shorter working week running up to Good Friday. On Wednesday, we are off to Wareham to speak at a CWDC event on the benefits of employing an Early Years Professional, then on Thursday it’s our whole staff Away Day. We are all looking forward to this opportunity to be together and hope it will be another positive experience.  On top of our ‘Love, Laughter and Learning’, we will be considering another ‘L’  – Listening : to children, to parents and to each other. And then in the afternoon we have a surprise in store! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Extract from a Year 1 R.E. book -         

 Thank you God.  Thank you for the stars in the sky at night,

Thank you for the bread we eat that makes our trousers tight.  :0)

E (3 year old boy) told me at lunch today about his helicopter DVD where a man jumped off the bottom of a ladder and landed on the ground but he didn’t hurt himself. Two children called out ‘Hello David-Wavid!’ and laughed hysterically, as you do, and another boy opened his mouth very wide to reveal a half eaten sausage and beans inside, whilst pointing to a clean plate. I got the message. ‘What a good eater you are,’ I replied.

What makes a good team?  There are loads of courses on this sort of thing but I think it just comes down to getting on with each other. Sometimes it seems we don’t see each other’s point of view, we don’t talk and we let things fester. Sometimes I have to deal with situations where scenarios from the past are replayed and it is evident that things that are no issue at all in the retelling, have  somehow been built into a subconcious mountain. And I can’t help thinking how sad it is that energy, time and emotion are wasted on brooding, harbouring grudges and feelings of low self worth. 

Watching children running, climbing, sharing, snatching, making noise, laughing, crying, delighting in activities, I can’t help wondering where we lose that ability to live in the moment and start interpreting and worrying about the consequences of past actions and what might befall us in the future. When are we happiest?  Isn’t it probably when we are able to be child like again and live in the moment? 

How very deep for a Friday afternoon!