What are the most common weaknesses of Child Daycares?

Question

What are the most common weaknesses of Child Daycares?

Answer 1

Finding good employees is definitley a weakness-high stress and low pay make it hard for the good teachers to stay.  Talk to the daycare employees and find out how long they've been there, see if they seem happy in their jobs.  If your child has special needs try to get them some sort of aid in the room-no matter how the teachers may love your child and try to help him or her, there is still the rest of the class to consider and all day one-on-one is next to impossible in that situation.

Answer 2

Depends on the type of daycare. All the daycares(other than In-Home) I've looked into for my daughter (probably 15 or so) have had a child to adult ratio of 7:1 or more for the 6 week to 1 year old group. No way was I going to bring my kid to a daycare where there were 7 or more infants to one adult. That's too much. I've seen it for the other age groups, too. One daycare had 10 toddlers to one adult.

In-home daycare has it's drawbacks too. Sometimes my daughter would be the only one in her age group, all the other kids were a lot older or young infants.

Answer 3

lazy and uncaring administrators

Answer 4

It has been a long while since my children were in a daycare, but home daycare and facility day care each have their shortfalls.  Not sure which you might be talking about, but I think the child to adult ratio needs to be adequate, so does cleanliness and hygiene.

Answer 5

I definately agree with one of the most common weaknesses being the turn-over rate of child care teachers.  Why? Like someone already mentioned...the pay is not enough to keep the good ones---the educated and caring.

Answer 6

Weaknesses would deffinately be child to teacher ratios, depending on the age group I would say what cirriculum is being taught, how clean the school is, procedures for sick children...........there are tons and I could go on for days...

Answer 7

Finding good employees!!!

Answer 8

HUGE classes

Kids may not be stimulated enough/bored

Some teachers do not speak English

lack of parent teacher communication

Teachers may not be properly trained/or not at all

Child be be pushed into another class when not ready to advance to make room for another child

FOR profit/ all the daycare cares about is money= Huge classes

Long hours for teacher/teachers not respected

viewed as a babysitter not as a teacher

Long wait list for parents

Teacher may be burnt out

Answer 9

The most common weakness I see in Family Child Care Homes is that many of them still consider themselves "babysitters" and therefore, they don't offer educational activites for the children.  They tend to turn on the TV and set up a playroom and then turn the kids loose.  They spend their days doing mob-control rather than teaching.  Or they move all of the children from activity to activity as a group, rather than setting out multiple activities for the children to choose.  In centers, I see a lot of staff members who want to punch in, sit and watch children from 9-5, and then go home.  They aren't interested in educating themselves about child growth and development.  They don't care about setting up their classrooms to nurture the children.  They don't want to observe or assess the children....you get the picture.  Don't get me wrong - there are excellent centers and family providers out there who are doing top notch jobs in their field, but you asked about weaknesses...  :-)

Answer 10

The most common weakness? Power and control!!  Many teachers/programs deal with issues of guidance as a opportunity to assert "who's in charge." I think it it somewhat an epidemic.  When there are times of the day when guidance is needed the word should be considered. Guidance!!  I think that classrooms that deal with guidance as a autocratic, teacher centered solution ,rob children of the abilities to negotiate, empower, empathize and have ownership.  All of these benefits add to a child's positive self regard.  The common weakness is the need to assert power and control to "solve" issues with guidance as a quick fix!

Answer 11

When I was a preschool teacher the biggest problem that we had was the rotating door of teachers.  I stayed for over 5 years, but I had at least ten different teachers.  What would happen the most was that a person was trying out if they wanted to be a teacher, then they decided that it was not for them.  But every once and a while we would find someone that just had that "thing" and clicked with the kids and other teachers and it was just great.  So if you are looking at day cares the best ones are the ones that have had more than five teachers in the whole daycare stay there for more than two years.  That shows that they enjoy their job and that the administration is behind them 100%.