Confronting the Child Care Crisis by Auerbach Stevanne;Rivaldo James A.;Ziegler Edward;

Author:Auerbach, Stevanne;Rivaldo, James A.;Ziegler, Edward; [Auerbach Stevanne, PhD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Published: 2016-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

An Exhaustive Study

During the course of the study, I visited many of the 150 child care facilities and 300 licensed family day care homes, as well as several unlicensed facilities and homes. From this number, I narrowed the list down to fifteen centers and five homes based on their sources of funding, their locations in the city, and the socio-economic characteristics of their customers. I focused on parental needs, desires and expectations. I examined, but did not emphasize, program content, philosophies and methods of the child care providers.

Almost unanimously, mothers wanted their children to spend at least part of the day outdoors. The types of outdoor play areas varied strikingly. Some were small, covered with asphalt, surrounded by chain-link fences and consisting of a few commercially manufactured and often rusty swings and slides. Others sparkled with imagination as a result of the creative use of cast-off items, such as barrels, scrap lumber, large appliance cartons, old tires and simply holes in the ground and piles of dirt. Since outdoor space is at a premium, some centers have none of their own. While some programs keep the children indoors all day, others take their children to parks and playgrounds, or simply for walks in the neighborhood to explore the community.

A few of the centers have television sets, which are used in a number of ways. In some centers, the children watch them only occasionally for programs such as Sesame Street, but at others, the television is the central focus of the children’s day.

Similarly, centers with only a few commercially manufactured toys and few improvised playthings reflect a lack of imagination in their staffs and the likelihood of limited creative, exploratory experiences of the children. Playthings made from cans, boxes, scraps of cloth and other household items usually discarded as junk not only save money, but also demonstrate to children that they can entertain themselves happily without the things they see advertised on television. A child care center that acknowledges the limited resources of the children’s parents serves families well by taking the time to show children how to use objects they might find around their own homes.

The organization of space within a children’s center affects the kinds of activities conducted there. Ideally, the center should accommodate large group activities with provisions for small group or individual activities. Children need occasional respite from their playmates and should be encouraged to spend time quietly alone. Many child care providers complain of a lack of space to provide for a wide variety of simultaneous activities, but often only thoughtful reorganization of existing space can open up unforeseen possibilities and potentials. Generally, the rigid, traditional classroom arrangement seen in several of the centers may keep the children “under control,” but usually at the expense of their opportunities to explore new activities and new ways of relating to playmates.

Several of the centers approach the goal of preschool preparation more formally than others, and this usually is reflected in the physical structure of the place and the ways in which adults relate to the children.

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