A woman arrives to collect her two-year-old toddler from nursery and proudly watches as he tenderly kisses his carers goodbye. All except for one, that is.At the time, the mother, a professional in her 30s, didn’t think any more of it. After all, her son had been going there from the age of six weeks and had always seemed fine.
So it was only a few weeks later when she was called in to see the nursery manager and told that there had been ‘a bit of an incident’ involving her child and the carer whom he would not kiss, one Nisha Rani, that she started to put two and two together. (continued...)
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Stories like this make parents paranoid...
ReplyDelete"We are concerned about our child's safety. All the horror stories about what happens at daycare led us to our decision to hire a nanny, however, we are concerned with having an unsupervised nanny in our home". (Parents interviewing me for a nanny position with a 2 month old infant.)
"Have you ever hit a child in daycare?" (A father asked me this question during an interview.)
"I would never do such a thing". (I was caught off guard at this question, I wasn't sure how to answer it, and my answer was the first thing that came to mind. There was a better way to ask this question.)
"Well, I guess I believe you, because someone is always watching you in daycare. If you physically harmed a child, someone would have caught you". (Not sure if the was the entire response to my answer, but close enough to it.)
I understand parents' concern when they read stories like this and stories of nannies abusing their charges. However, I do think that parents need to decide what they want for childcare, and if they are that concerned, they should stay home with their child. Secondly, I also think that parents need to learn how to interview nanny candidates without offending them. I would never lay a hand on a child, and when I was asked that question about hitting a child while I was on the clock, I was greatly offended not by the question, but by the tone in which the question was asked.
Some people do not belong in the field of early childhood ed, as a nanny or teacher. Those that harm children give the good educators (I use nannies, teachers, agency owners and daycare owners the catergory of "educator") a bad name.