08/11/2024
Minnesota Public Radio just broadcast a great show on
FREE PLAY, SUPERVISION, AND PRIVACY FOR CHILDREN
Daycare licensing practices are the implacable and powerful enemies of almost everything children want and need.
Caution: The following honest criticisms and stroies of childcare licensing practices is unpleasant, may be hard to read, perhaps even unfair. I have tried to write from in person, face-to-face experience, or things I was taught in official childcare training classes, or events I heard of from known and trusted sources.
Babies are not allowed to sleep in a baby sling on the front of the caregiver‘s body listening to her heart. Not even for a minute.
A child care provider is not allowed to hold and cuddle a tiny baby who falls asleep in her arms while nursing. She is required to instantly put the baby in a crib which almost always wakes the baby up.
Babies are not allowed to fall asleep in a stroller. Taking a fussy baby for a walk so she can fall asleep is grounds for license revocation.
If a baby falls asleep in her car seat on a field trip, this is grounds for licensing revocation. Long ago, the President of the Minnesota Licensed Family Childcare Association, a great childcare provider, lost her childcare license, her career, her marriage, and her home. She had to move to Wisconsin with her children.
Babies are never allowed to sleep in a mechanical or electric swing. Even if that’s the only way that the baby can sleep at daycare, it’s absolutely forbidden. Not even if the baby's parents, one a professor of pediatric medicine and the other a professor of child development, ask for the electric baby swing.
A highest possible ranked Four Star childcare playground has no trees, no grass, no flowerbeds, no vegetables, nothing living or Green. Minnesota spends $40 million per year on Parent Aware which sets terrible and hurtful standards for daycare.
Daycare Children may not have swings. Swings are considered to be too dangerous even though they are thousands of years old.
The play yard in our daycare had more than a dozen trees, large patches of lawn, several flower gardens, and a nice vegetable garden. Mostly Planted and Tended by the children. So our playground had the lowest possible rank of zero stars.
Babies are not allowed to be in baby bouncers. Many babies love their bouncers. Good exercise, laughing, and happiness. Implacably banned by daycare licensing workers.
Preschool children are no longer allowed to go for a walk with their own feet. Going for a walk they must be tied into an eight or ten place industrial stroller with five point harnesses. Walking is too dangerous.
Daycare children are not allowed to make a "blanket fort". If the kids hang blankets over some chairs, the childcare provider can be accused of child sexual abuse. License revoked.
I was visiting a big Montessori center. The children tried to bring their nap blankets over to the indoor play climber. Free play! They were stopped and required to bring the blankets back to the cots.
Daycare children are not allowed to have a play fort, a play castle, or a play space shuttle. Not indoors or outdoors. Licensing workers consider that child sexual abuse.
"THE CHILDREN DON'T NEED MUSIC OR STORIES."
Our day care licensing worker would not allow us to employ a flat "wall-hugger" extension cord plug for our music center, to eliminate strain and help prevent fires. She said to me, almost smiling, "The children don't need music or stories."
As the MPR radio show guest correctly pointed out, a modest easing of extreme supervision is necessary for high-quality play. Licensing workers implacably oppose even the slightest amount of appropriate privacy for the children. Licensing workers, in practice, powerfully oppose free play.
Won't clean up s_ _t!
An assistant director of the Minneapolis Public Health Nurses told me on the phone (direct personal conversation), the Public Health Nurses support banning small fill-and-dump wading pools in childcare because the "black providers on the north side won't dump out or clean their pool after a child poops in the pool."
An Assistant Commissioner in the Minnesota Department of Human Services told a group of more than twenty day care parents who had invited him to a meeting,
"WHEN WE THIS MUCH SUPPORT FOR A CHILDCARE PROVIDER, THE FIRST THING WE THINK OF IS, THE PARENTS AND THE PROVIDER ARE COOPERATING TO SEXUALLY ABUSE THE CHILDREN."
Yes, really, yes. I was in the room when he said this directly to the parents faces. He was not murdered, lynched, or fired by DHS.
I have far too many more real, honest stories of horrible licensing personnel, events, and practices.
All powerful daycare licensing workers and administrators are implacably opposed to almost everything that children need or want.
There is a surprising simple technical solution which would greatly help this situation. A small change could work toward higher quality, cheaper, and more plentiful childcare in Minnesota.
Require the Minnesota Department of Human Services to Obtain a Warrant Before Issuing something called a Temporary Immediate Suspension. The TIS does endless harm and creates a terrible atmosphere of untouchable official abuse and provider terror.
Requiring a warrant would help child care providers in untold ways and cost almost nothing.
Michael Kauper, retired
M&M Family Childcare Home
Minneapolis, Minnesota
