Achieving the Best Start in Life for Children !

We really must not push childcare for very early years so much. 

Families need support to care as well !

Toddler groups and playgroups are an approach that is good.

Mothers (or fathers if they are doing the childcaring) staying with kids at these young ages means that parent child bonding occurs and good communication skills are developed and children have a stable secure start in life. From this they can thrive. If parents need extra help with this then adult helpers at e.g. toddler groups can lead sessions in how to play and have fun with your children.

Toddler Group Christmas party :

This side of the debate needs to be heard - and I am afraid to say they may not be heard from very high achieving career women in media, politics etc - so we need to see a balance where work hours are reduced and not just childcare hours increased.  If necessary families can receive funding to help with the difference in wages or salary due to this. But as childcare is currently subsidised (at great expense to taxpayers including single earner families who are highly taxed...) then why not subside parents doing this childcare ! Especially if it means the children get a better start in life. And who knows everyone might even have some fun along the way ! Its what life is meant to be about after all !!!

Another toddler group party !

Time Out !

Take Time Out for Kids !

Children are the most important thing. They are our futures.

And every family should be able to take Time Out to enjoy bringing up their kids.

They should be supported if they want to take some time out from work for a few years to rear their young age 0 - 3.  And once the kids are at school, right up to the teenage years, there should be the possibility to work part time for at least one parent.

The current push to make the school day longer will not suit many kids. The school day is long enough and many kids just need to get home to relax after school.

We need to stop thinking that people who "stay at home" with kids (a misnomer if ever there was one !) are somehow a different species !
Many mothers, and a few fathers, take a few years out when their children are babies and toddlers. This is what many want to do and its great for the kids.  Relaxing in the playpark while playing with friends, running across the grass after toddler group, visiting friends, going shopping, going swimming, picking strawberries at a fruit farm, playing football, going to playgroup.  Now most of these things I have listed are free things to do,  or at least very inexpensive, as parents work together to run toddler groups and playgroups. Its a community effort !  Now surely that is worth valuing.

So lets all realise that Time Out With Kids can be a good thing.  It has been shown to be good for the children's mental health with respect to bonding with their parents, attachment theory etc. and apart from anything else it is good fun. It is what life is about.

I like this piece which was a reading at a funeral I was at recently, of a friend's father who was very much a "family man", it makes me think of how there is a "time to work, a time to spend with your young children, a time to support your older children, a time for your parents, etc." :

There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:
A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.
A time for killing, a time for healing; a time for knocking down, a time for building.
A time for tears, a time for laughter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing.
A time for throwing stones away, a time for gathering them; a time for embracing, a time to refrain from embracing.
A time for searching, a time for losing; a time for keeping, a time for discarding.
A time for tearing, a time for sewing; a time for keeping silent, a time for speaking.
A time for loving, a time for hating; a time for war, a time for peaceWhat do people gain from the efforts they make?
I contemplate the task that God gives humanity to labour at.
All that he does is apt for its time; but although he has given us an awareness of the passage of time, we can grasp neither the beginning nor the end of what God does.
I know there is no happiness for a human being except in pleasure and enjoyment through life.
And when we eat and drink and find happiness in all our achievements, this is a gift from God

A Framework for Parents to Register as Childminders of Own Children

As more funds are directed towards subsidising childcare, what is to happen for parents who wish to bring up their own children at ages 0-3 ?

This is still the choice for many, and many of those parents do so because they believe it is right and make financial sacrifices. Others choose it because they want to enjoy rearing their own children and wish to take a few years out from their career. After all, a working life can be over 40 years so why not take a few years out ?  And others would like to have the chance to do this yet can't afford to take the time off work.

Other parents decide they want to stay in their career and prefer to hand over the care of their young ones at age 0-3 to a qualified childminder or to a nursery.

Now, before everyone thinks what I am about to say is outrageous, lets not forget that children still need a carer. If you go to work, the child is cared for. There is a worker and a carer.  If you stay at home, you are the carer, but the person who might have been paid to care for your child is perhaps free to take up a job in the wider labour market. If you have three young children, it probably balances out about the same effect overall whether you work or care for your own children. It still takes two people to do the job plus the childcare !

So, my argument is, why not have a subsidy for a family with a young child age 0-3 and it can either be used to cover nursery fees or else to subsidise a parent who wishes to do the child rearing themselves.

This could be organised in a informal framework and if parents are to receive a subsidy they should be required to show at least that they are getting involved in the following types of activities, perhaps not in quite as strictly monitored a way as is required for a childminder, but still to make sure that there will be positive outcomes for the children and in fact this should also be beneficial for the parents as I will discuss further on. So the types of activities the parents would be required to get involved in could include :

• taking their children to various activities such as baby and toddler groups, playgroup and swimming classes. (all of which usually cost money, hence the tie-in with funding)
• Taking part in some small amounts of training such as basic First Aid for children (which was provided in my case post-natally and was excellent) and Triple P Parenting classes which show you how to do positive behaviour techniques, so avoiding having to resort to such things as physical punishment etc. (this was provided as training for parents if they wished at our local school nursery).  This already does happen in post-natal support groups and education of parents via some school nurseries but it would be nice to record such training.
• taking short online modules in child psychology, health, nutrition and behaviour lcould be taken or post natal support classes at health centres could run short sessions on these as currently happens, but in this case attendance could be recorded.

Placing the whole thing in a slightly formal framework could actually lead to parents having a basic childcare qualification at the end of the three years of parenting, and this could even lead to enhanced job opportunities at the end of the process.  It could also eventually lead to there being more childminders in the system, which is particularly needed in rural areas and in areas where childcare services are already stretched to the limit.
If the parent takes part in this process and has registered as a childcarer then they would have access to the funding that all children are entitled to for their childcare.

Why Not !!?

I phoned in to a radio phone in to make this very point, and someone else phoned in to reply "why should parents be paid to stay at home ?". Yes you might agree when it is stated like that. But child-rearing should involve much more than "staying at home". It is usually the very opposite to that and involves being very much out in the community and meeting other people, learning new skills and learning how to generally get on with other people. You might have your first experience of running a toddler group or being on a playgroup committee and dealing with accounts etc. Personally I ended up as a representative on a community council for the first time. These are all worthwhile experiences. And you learn how to entertain groups of children - a very useful skill if you do decide to make a career of it afterwards !
But more than that its fun !
And that is what is sad about the current arguments - certainly no-one dares to say that now.

But come on folks, from a purely logical point of view - Why can a Parent not be a Childminder ?

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And an additional question to the SNP in Scotland - Why Not ?
Can you really disagree with anything I have said ? Would this not lead to a better and more secure future for Scotland's children ? And give parents the freedom to have control how they run their families ?  Freedom, Choice, Future - these are all things I would like to see in Scotland and elsewhere.