Many Good Parents Choose Daycare

The recent report hit working parents everywhere like a slap in the face: A 10-year-long study financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) determined that long hours spent at daycare centers result in "overly aggressive" children who present a host of behavioral problems for their kindergarten teachers.

The resulting publicity has put the potential risks of child care back on the national radar screen. If that makes parents, communities, and the government take a long, hard look at the quality of care that their children are receiving, that's great! Poor-quality child care is a national scandal, or it should be.

But if new research convinces good parents that they are harming their children by putting them in daycare and that the only responsible way to raise a child is for a parent (let's not kid ourselves, a motherin most cases) to stay at home, then it's not doing anyone a service.

Look beyond the headlines
The gist of the research is that 17 percent of kindergarteners who had spent more than 30 hours per week in paid child care were reported as being "overly aggressive" toward other children, while only 6 percent of those who were in paid care for less than 10 hours per week were rated as aggressive.

On the surface, this finding would seem to support the headline that "Daycare Makes Children Aggressive." But there are several reasons to question this conclusion:

1. We don't have the actual published report to look at and critique. The research findings came from a large, federally funded project, and they were presented April 19 at a national meeting of the well-respected Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis. But until the details are published-and that could be weeks or months from now--it's impossible to make an independent judgment about possible flaws in the research that could undercut its validity.



2. Even accepting that the study was well done, the claim that child care causes aggression is a stretch. It's rare that a single study proves that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between one thing and another. The best way to do this is through a true experiment, by which I mean a study in which the research exposes one group of randomly chosen children to the proposed cause, while not exposing another randomly chosen group.



3. Of course, that didn't happen in this study. Rather, the children who spent more time in paid care did so because their parents felt that it was necessary or desirable; the children who spent less time in daycare had parents who felt differently. In other words, there were differences in parental attitudes and family situations before the children ever got to child care. How can we be certain that these differences did not account for the reported aggressiveness? I'm not trying to say that I know what the differences were, or how they might have affected the children's behavior, but only that the NICHD study leaves some important questions unanswered.



4. The findings are inconsistent with much previous research that has shown that the important factor is not whether or not a child attends child care, but rather the quality of the care that he receives. The differences between high- and poor-quality care can be dramatic. In one, children are attended by well-trained, sensitive, caring adults who know how to win their trust; support their emotional, social, and cognitive development; and work together with the parents as a team. In the other, children may be all but neglected, if not actively abused. Knowledge of child development, as well as common sense, would lead one to expect rather large differences in aggression, anxiety, and other behavioral and emotional outcomes between these two extremes of child-care quality, and other studies have indeed found this. Yet the recent, highly publicized study apparently found only a small or modest effect related to quality. One has to wonder why.

I do not mean to discount the study altogether. It was large, well funded, and carried out by respected researchers. But I do think that it's a mistake to merely accept the one-line conclusion that child care causes aggressiveness. The truth is sure to be more complex than that.

What you can do
If you're a parent with children in daycare, the news linking longer child-care hours with behavior problems should move you to act, but not necessarily to quit your job and stay home. Instead, take another look at your arrangement: Is your child happy and comfortable in her daycare situation? Does she have caring, sensitive adults to interact with, and (especially for young children) is there one adult with whom she has developed a special, trusting bond?

Is your child showing signs of aggressive or anxious behavior? If so, think broadly about all the possible causes and what you might be able to do to help her feel more comfortable. Simply stopping the child care may not be the best solution (it may not even be possible). On the other hand if your child seems to be having trouble adjusting to long days away from you and you've been feeling that you're missing out on too much of her early life, you may want to consider working fewer hours and having more time at home. (I mean this advice to apply equally whether you are the father or the mother.) In other words, the decision about use of paid child care has to be a personal one, not one dictated by a single research study. Children and families thrive when parents have a full range of options, from high-quality care to staying at home, and choose what they judge to be best for their family overall.

Be A Good Parents, Do This

Raising children demands a vast set of complex skills that can’t be distilled into a Top 10 list like you’d see on Letterman. Still, the lofty fundamentals — love, respect, morality — are surprisingly easy to reduce to simple, achievable daily goals.

Hey, it worked for Moses, the other guy with the Top 10 list.

None of these goals will make you smack your forehead and wonder why you never thought of them before. In fact you probably do many of them already, three days out of four. It’s a matter of being mindful of what you’re doing, rather than acting on reflex. Here are ten little ways to do something good for your kids — today.

1. Really listen to your child.

Nowhere are we more likely to act on reflex than when responding to our kids’ talk. Sometimes it’s the knee-jerk “no” — the easiest of parental answers to a request. It also shows up in our tendency to half-listen, giving our kids the impression that what we’re doing — even if it’s emptying the lint trap on the dryer — is more important than what they’re saying.

Or we interrupt them. “For some parents, there’s a tendency to correct misinformation or try to teach as we’re listening,” says Janice MacAulay, who works with the Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs in Ottawa. “That doesn’t allow enough time for what’s really important to come out.” If your preschooler says, “Mom, I really gots to tell you something…” it’s not the time to correct her grammar, or you may never hear what she gots to say.

MacAulay believes it’s important for every kid to get focused attention — that means putting down the lint trap and sitting down to look him in the eye. “A little attention goes a long way, and when we give it, it has to be 100 percent.”

2. Do Something Familiar.

It’s not just toddlers who love repetition — rituals and routines are comforting for everyone. Some follow religious or ethnic customs, others are weirdly idiosyncratic. Either way, they help shape a family’s identity.

Carolyn Monaghan and her husband, Glen, look forward to what she calls “a pleasant, predictable sequence of events” each night with their five-year-old daughter, Heather. “At bedtime we ask her, ‘What are you going to dream about?’” says the mother of two from Langley, BC. “She’ll say she is going to dream about something we did that day, or what she’s looking forward to. Then we tell her what we’re going to dream about.”

Alyson Schäfer, a Toronto parent educator, says a fun family ritual — whether it’s Sunday brunch at a pancake house or a weekly basketball game in the driveway — can be an oasis for families where there’s a lot of friction. “You may not be able to solve all of your family’s woes,” she says, “but by doing more of what’s fun, you change the ratio of good times to bad times, and just by doing that you have a happier family.”

3. Kiss your partner in front of your child.

Yes, your kids may cover their eyes and say you’re being gross. But public displays of affection nurture your marriage and model a healthy relationship.

As Schäfer notes, the arrival of children puts a whole new stress on a couple’s bond. “There’s a mistaken notion that your marriage will wait,” she says. “I’ve seen parents with six-year-olds who have never left their child with a babysitter, never gone on a holiday or even gone out for dinner or a movie.”

They might learn something from Kennan Silva of Edmonton. “My husband, Todd, and I do little things for each other. Sometimes he’ll bring me a chocolate bar, or I’ll have coffee ready for when he gets home from work. We hope that when our children are adults, they find the same kind of loving relationship and will not settle for less than what they deserve.”

4. Read together.

This must be the most common public service message out there (after the one about erectile dysfunction), but regular story time can tail off as soon as kids learn to read by themselves. For families who do continue, the rewards go beyond literacy.

“My girls are seven and nine and we read to them about five nights a week,” says Jen Hrabarchuk of The Pas, Manitoba. “Reading to them gives us an opportunity to have cuddle time, which becomes rare at this age. Plus, we get to see how much they actually comprehend from longer stories. Over the past year we’ve read The Hobbit, Little House on the Prairie and A Wrinkle in Time.”

Helen Whitehorn and her husband, Mike, of Newmarket, Ontario, take turns being the narrator with their eight-year-old son, Matthew. “Sometimes he will read a page, we’ll read the next. Sometimes we read and he just listens, and sometimes he will read to us. He likes non-fiction and finds it fascinating to learn new facts. If he doesn’t understand something, he and Dad will talk about it together.”

5. Touch your child.

No one needs to remind parents to cuddle their infants. But like bedtime stories, hugs and kisses often taper off as kids get older and find them embarrassing. Even so, physical affection doesn’t have to mean giving your 12-year-old a zerbert on the belly while his skateboarding pals are visiting.

“For some people it’s awkward, so find the ways that are OK with you,” MacAulay suggests. It may be lying down together at bedtime, a relaxed hair brushing, a wrestling match or even a half-hour on the couch in front of the tube. MacAulay knows of a mom with lots of teenagers who once told her, “I don’t really like television, but I do sit and watch, mostly because I’m hip-to-hip with a couple of kids.”

6. Laugh during a tense moment.

Leah Johnson of Chilliwack, BC, learned first-hand how a laugh can defuse a volcanic situation. She was in the minivan with Graham, six, and Sydney, four, when the bickering got to her. “I felt a yell starting in my throat, and I tried to think of a good threat. Since I couldn’t follow through with the old ‘knock it off or you’re both walking home,’ well, I barked at them!”

Johnson says there was instant silence in the back seat. “Four very round eyes looked back at me in the mirror. Graham started giggling, and the next thing we knew we were all howling with laughter. They both started barking right back at me, and it was a very noisy but happy trip home. I’ve used it quite a few times since then. I wonder if it will still work when they’re teenagers.”

7. Find out one important thing about your child’s day.

For some parents and kids, catching up comes naturally around the dinner table, before bedtime or in that most popular of family meeting places — the car. Others may need a conversation starter. “One way to get kids to open up is to briefly share your own experiences with them first,” MacAulay says. Some families even have a ritual in which parents and kids share one good thing and then one bad thing that happened to them during the day.

Like everything else, though, there needs to be a balance, MacAulay says. As kids mature, they need space to grow and that means we shouldn’t be involved in every aspect of their daily lives. “It’s important to become comfortable with not knowing.”

8. Resist the urge to be a saviour.

This isn’t the best advice when your preschooler decides to try out dad’s acetylene torch or explore a divided highway. However, when your 11-year-old forgets her school project (after you reminded her twice), or when your son’s T-ball swing isn’t going to get him to the majors, you sometimes just need to back off.

“I like to talk about developing a child’s psychological muscle,” says Schäfer. “We want to prepare our kids for life, not protect them from it. Otherwise we interfere with important developmental processes.” When the consequences aren’t huge, allowing our kids to fail helps teach them to succeed next time. And we can give a nudge to their problem-solving abilities. “You forgot your homework today? What do you need to do so it won’t happen tomorrow?”

9. Do something nice for your caregiver.

Finding and keeping good child care is difficult, but the payoff is big for your peace of mind and your children’s comfort. Whether they’re live-in nannies or workers at a daycare centre, caregivers don’t like to be treated like indentured servants. Take the time to let them know you appreciate what they do for your kids.

A survey of nannies on Todaysparent.com revealed that many don’t even get a gift on their birthdays or at Christmas. Those who did made it clear that it meant a lot. “One family I worked for would leave me little notes, flowers or baking as a way to show that they valued the work I did for them,” says Vicki Sims, nanny to two girls. “It does take a bit of effort, but it’s worth it.”

10. Don’t worry about the previous nine items.

Half a century ago, a guy named Dr. Spock told parents, “You know more than you think you do.” Then along comes a blasted magazine article to point out all the things you’re forgetting.

Of course, that’s not the point. All the goals we’ve listed are worth striving for, but no one will ever accomplish all of them, every day. So don’t beat yourself up trying to do the impossible. And while there may be dads who have hang-ups about bringing the best cupcakes to daycare, this is mainly a chick thing. “Their expectations are going through the ceiling,” Schäfer says of moms. “Look for improvement as opposed to perfection.”

It’s easier to be realistic if you spend time with others in similar situations. “So many women tell me one-on-one how awful they feel because they don’t like to play Barbies for four hours. They think that’s what good mothers do, and that every mother is doing it.”

Schäfer feels it comes down to cutting yourself the same slack you give your children. “Parents get the concept of encouragement when it’s applied to their kids, but they forget they need to be self-encouraging as well.”