Reply to DC now requiring day care workers to have college degrees

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[quote=Anonymous]My personal decision was to put my child, now age 4, in a center with teachers who all have at least a CDA.  I revisit the decision about once a year -- so I've toured A LOT of other daycares -- but I always decide to stay there (and yes, I'm fortunate to afford it).  The reason I stay is that plenty of warm loving people are not equipped to deal with normal toddler behavior.  I do not want my child to hear something nasty from an overwhelmed teacher who either doesn't realize the behavior is normal or doesn't know how to respond appropriately.  I did not want any shaming surrounding potty training.  I [i]did [/i]want my child to hear age-appropriate messages on things like the correct names for body parts, general equality (no "boys are strong, girls are pretty" which I have heard at several daycares), etc.  These are all things that are covered in formal childhood education.

I have toured some really expensive, beautiful daycares where the main teacher qualification is being the mother of a nice kid, usually a kid who attended that daycare.  That's a really limited experience to try to apply to a classroom.  I grew up going to various in-home daycares run by perfectly nice parents and there was still a lot of weird shit -- silent treatment from adults, naked swimming, kids locking each other in a closet, digging a pit to trap another kid (in this case, my younger sister, who remembers the incident vividly).  Parenting varies wildly, and you don't have to beat children to damage them.
 
I absolutely understand the cost issues and the impact on providers who can't/won't go back to school, but the right thing to do is pay caretakers more while also demanding the same kind of childcare subsidies and government support that other first-world nations provide so that women can work -- not to keep our standards low and pretend this is low-skill babysitting work.  We all pay a ton for childcare, but we don't get much for the money.[/quote]

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