Today at my center, we had a child who had a seizure. I was on break when it happened. I returned from break to hear. We need you now. It's an emergency. Words I don't want to hear... It was just scary all around. I was able to distract the 7 other 2 year olds with songs, but as soon as the medics came in, we joined the other class across the way. The kid is the sweetest thing, and he ended up getting taken to the ER. Several medics were present, and over half of the kids saw the medics at some point. I am grateful to work with a caring community of teachers who called 911 at the first sign of danger and supported each other through tears. Thankfully, he is stable now. Now time to have a glass of wine and process what happened.

Mama here looking for advice… I have a Toddler (2.5) in a daycare setting. Was asked to have a meeting with director regarding a behavior— toddler opens classroom door to playground and runs out (like daily). Apparently thinks it’s a game. Someone has to go get him, the whole song and dance. Doesn’t do this at home at all. Only getting “rough day” reports vs anything positive. Struggling here on 2 things: 1) this behavior and its negatives spilling over into other interactions with his caregivers…. 2) how is meeting with me to work together supposed to help at all when this happens when toddler is in the care of daycare provider??! Just secure the door or make inside activity more engaging?? Help

My playground at my center is facing the back yard of a residence, with only a chain link fence separating the two. Today, when my Fives were playing outside (along with the Fours and Threes), the kid who lives in the house on the other side of the fence was playing with a cap gun (not my toy of choice but whatever) and mostly minding his own business far from the fence and our kids. The lead teacher of the Threes class started freaking out, saying that the boy was pointing the gun at her kids and that we needed to have our director tell the kid to play with something else while we're outside. At one point she even started asking the kid to "go away" and other things like that.

I don't allow my class to pretend to have guns, to talk about guns, or to pretend to shoot them (fingers or with toys), but I also like to teach them that sometimes there are just things you can't change, so I asked them not to interact with the boy and to otherwise ignore him. Threes teacher starts getting aggressive with me because I didn't seem to have an issue about the boy. I just figured it was a situation of "what can I do?" He's on his own property, and it's not like he's shooting the toy gun or pointing it at our kids. I calmly told her that if she really didn't like it and didn't want her class to see it that she should take them inside and tell the director about her concerns.

I know toy guns aren't allowed in our school or on the playground but I couldn't help but feel like she was overreacting a bit? But maybe I was under reacting? I'm not sure, but would like to see how others would have handled it. Thanks!

a follow up i wish i wasn't writing to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ECEProfessionals/comments/11ophij/overwhelmed/

it has only been a handful of days, not even a week, since that last post. somehow i've gotten into even more trouble without trying. this past monday was okay i think? i honestly can't even remember because of what happened the following day.

yesterday started out badly. the new hire was constantly nitpicking me, telling me to do things before i even got the chance to do them myself. essentially just not letting me do my thing. on top of that, a kid in my class that has been acting up recently was acting worse than usual. i was trying to redirect the kid to do something else, the new hire was trying to get her to do the work she didn't wanna do. eventually, i told the new hire that i wanted her to take the child down to talk with our director. she told me that our director wasn't here, and asked me if she could take the kid down to the toddler room. i told her i honestly didn't know, and that if she was curious she could take her down and see what was up. neither of us had any idea where the director was.

before this, my director had texted me about having another new hire put up projects in the hallway when they should be in the class getting more used to the kids, that any directives to anyone need to come from her and not me. this lowkey struck a cord with me because it was an honest mistake, but she was taking it so personally. i thought she said that either the new hire or another assistant in our room could put up the projects, since i swore that was what she told when she was in the room with us the previous week. i guess not!

strike 2 was sending the kid downstairs to see what we could do and where the director was. i get a text from my director about 10 minutes after she went downstairs saying that a kid should never be kicked out of class unless it's serious, that she told me to use her as a sort of threat towards them as a last resort, not to kick them out of the room. this also immediately peeved me off because she didn't even bother to actually figure out the situation.

STRIKE 3 was talking to a parent about their child's sudden recent flair of naptime accidents. i was talking to this kids mom about his accidents, since he had never had them before. for background, he started having accidents after our previous teacher left (which doesn't paint me in a very good light haha!!) she was expressing that she didn't know what was wrong, so i asked if there was anything going on at home, if there were any changes. she was taken aback by this, i rushed to explain that i didn't mean anything bad, just that changes can cause it. she said well he hadn't had accidents until the teacher left. i agreed and said it's probably the change. she leaves. IMMEDIATELY i get a text from my director saying that her and i need to have a sit down because what i said to this parent was inappropriate, that it isn't my place to ask. and immediately i start sobbing. the other assistants in the room asked what was wrong, and i asked if i had said anything wrong to this kids mom. they said no.

i talked to my director this morning and told her that i was taught to talk to the parents about these things. she still told me it's not appropriate, and that it was disrespectful. she also, for some reason, told me that that parent was going to "blast" me. aka she was going to yell at me. i explained myself for that, and for the "kicking out" situation. i straight up told her i don't think i should stay there. too bad i didn't get to ACTUALLY quit since we didn't even have time to finish our conversation.

someone please explain to me what i'm doing wrong, genuinely.

i am the lead school-age teacher. our school has a very high turnover rate and we are always short staffed. recently, a new girl started working in my classroom as an assistant teacher. she is super nice and i like her, but she is only 17, so i can’t leave her alone with the kids.

i have nothing against her at all, but i wish my school wouldn’t hire people who can’t stay alone with kids. even when we are well within ratio, i can’t leave the room.

I've noticed that the school principal treats some children in my class better than others. Her granddaughter is in the class and as far as the principal is concerned the girl can do no wrong. She is one of my rough kids and does not listen. When it's been brought up in meetings I've been told " Well, she doesn't act that way for me." Mom knows how rough the child is but does nothing to correct behavior. The principal will treat her like a baby when she's around. She also treats some of my other students very poorly because she doesn't like their parents

I've noticed that 2 other staff members also treat some kids differently. They're really nice to the "good kids" and treat others like shit. I don't even know how to do about bringing this up since the principal is one of the people doing it

My coteachers and I are considering upgrading our play kitchen and would love to hear some recommendations. We have the Becker's one with the red sink which is durable and nice but we've had it for five years and it's a bit narrow at 30" wide for 9 tots.

Long time lurker first time poster. I'm really interested to get an idea of who is part of this group. Watching some of the posts there's quite a variance in opinion so I wondered a few things.

Where are you based and what are the expected qualifications you must hold to work in Early Childhood? What are the benefits/pay like? If you don't have qualifications are you encouraged to learn about child development and pedagogical theory? What about different ways of being and different cultures? Is their mandated regulations where you live/work about having someone with a teaching degree on staff? What are the child:adult ratios?

ETA: Wow, these are all really mind blowing for me. For context I'm a degree qualified early childhood teacher from New Zealand. I work in kindergarten so everyone working with the kids is qualified to that level. We have pay parity with primary teachers and have to maintain teacher certification and prove that we are continually developing our practices and staying up to date with current theories. Even within daycare we have to have at least 50% (used to be 80%) of staff qualified and holding teacher registration. We have ratios of 1:10 for 2-5 Yr olds and 1:5 with under 2s.

Hello! I work at a small day care and we don't have any classroom management system. I have been looking around and I see conscious disciple and pyramid model.

But they look overwhelming. I was wondering what others use or what their experience is with these systems?

Hi everyvone!

I‘m currently working in a childcare facilty and i have look after one child with autistism , who is never listening, likes to hurt other kids and myself and gets angry easily and never wants to clean up anything. Today i was with him in a room and he wanted to throw toy cars against the window, i repeatedly said no (a bit louder the second time) and also offered an explanation why he should not do that, said tomorrow he would not be allowed to play with them again …..as that did not help i tried to get the cars out of his hands because he kept on throwing them on the window, he tried to kick me and throw everything in the room on the floor and i saw no other option than to hold him down as long as he got a bit quieter… and then i went with him to a room where he could be alone to calm down further… So my question…Am i wrong in holding him down in such situations… i really saw no other option but i‘m not feeling good with it?

I’ve had this student (4) for 2 years (I used to work in toddlers, then switched to preschool). From the start, this child has been challenging. Hitting, kicking, biting, etc. We’ve done what we can. Redirection, modeling behavior, praising, etc. We’ve tried to find the source and have eliminated so much but it never ends.

The real issue is the parents. They don’t want to do anything. Directors hold meetings with us and the parents. They say he doesn’t do it at home so they’re not concerned.

Now, I’m pregnant. This child has hit, bit and kicked me in the past. I’m used to it as a preschool teacher. But this is the third time he has punched me-hard-in my stomach.

I can’t do this anymore. My directors are supportive and I don’t want to quit. But I cannot do this anymore. I am thinking about asking him to be moved to a new class. There’s another room that will soon have a vacancy.

I have never wanted to give up on a child but I am at my limit.

Have you ever done this? How has it worked?

And honestly, it's about freaking time!! We've had a disgusting stomach bug going around for the last three weeks. I've never had so many kids out sick, even during the height of Covid & flu season!

I'm glad my director is putting the health and safety of us staff and the kids first. I've worked places that would have made me come in 24/7/365 if they could, and to have my director flat-out say "nope, we're not doing this" is wonderful.

I’ve worked at my center for years. I used to be a teacher there and then got promoted to a coaching/family engagement position. It’s been two years and it’s been absolute hell. The children are fine but the adults are horrible.

The center is medium sized, with 12 classrooms staffed by two teachers each (4 rooms only have 1 teacher) and there are also floaters and front desk employees.

There are a small group of coworkers who have made my life hell this entire time. At first I dealt with it because I thought it was normal after a promotion. The worst bully got herself fired for committing a crime against me. I regret not suing/filing charges but I didn’t realize I could and I also just became hopeful that things would get better with her gone. However her friends remained employed and continue to find ways to mentally bully me.

I have tried every thing I can think of, including be super available, running from room to room to help with behaviors or any thing. I ended up doing so many bathroom breaks, random errands, and dealing with very minor behaviors and not being able to complete my own agenda or be a true coach.

I tried to be absolutely perfect, it made them worse, even angrier.

I tried to be apologetic, I tried to play my role down, I tried to be vulnerable. Nothing has worked, it has not stopped.

In the most recent months I’ve dealt with teachers yelling at me, being cold shouldered/refusal to speak to me, gossiped about, undermined (front desk person telling a teacher and my boss that the teachers shouldn’t have to do their lesson planning form).

There are at least 3 of these employees who will go to my boss and complain about ANYTHING. Like one time the assistant director had me in ratio in a toddler classroom, so I couldn’t go to our middle building to monitor the front door, so that teacher texted director to let her know I wasn’t there.

I had been supporting a toddler teacher for a couple of weeks with a child who was busy but not that problematic. The teacher didn’t implement any strategies. While I was doing a behavioral intervention with another child who was actually having a real meltdown, the teacher started calling me obsessively, when I got to her room, her and the front desk person were loudly complaining about me not being available. I told them where I was, but the front desk person still complained to my boss that I was not present for support.

My daughter is very sick, she has been fully admitted to the hospital twice due to low oxygen. When I miss work for that, they spread rumors that I’m a favorite and receive unfair treatment. I’ve been “in trouble” for missing too much work because of my daughter. Also some of that time was covid quarantines. My boss said that every one was angry at me for being absent so much and that they did not care/it was not their problem if my daughter was sick, even though she got sick and/or quarantined because of the daycare.

I caught wind of rumors of these workers saying mean things like they should have my job and they could make things better.

The list goes on and on. The worst part is the teachers feeding into each other and spreading the negativity.

I’ve never set an expectation that wasn’t a regulation or best practice. I’m actually really relaxed on a lot of things!

My boss does not support me, she has people pleasing issues and expects me to brush it all off.

I ended up so depressed I felt suicidal, I couldn’t get out of bed to go to work, I called in and I went to a crisis center to get help.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to give away too many details and risk being found by coworker but leaving the center is likely not an option due to my specific situation.

I feel trapped.

Please help by taking my grad school survey about the association between US teachers (prek-5th grade) classroom stress and disruptive classroom behaviors. Thank you in advance. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1jzyXxEmF9YDVw_QLSAs3b_maZPDODodNtskz-qFMbVg/edit

So today at work, I was helping out with the kinder camp at one of the sites. I am a substitute ECE so I just go into places whenever I’m needed.

There was 12 kids in the room, me and 2 full timers. I was basically there all day to help out with lunch coverage. I noticed that because there was only 12 children…technically only 1 ece is fine to be in the room. I was getting very frustrated because the two full timers kept leaving to room to go talk with others, sit around, and do nothing. LYING about doing their documentation’s and program planning. For me, I was stuck in the room, having to pee so bad and was stuck with a dead walk talkie (they never packed full battery ones and I came last that morning)

I ended up getting upset and asked if I could leave. How could you leave a substitute ece all by herself while two full timers are using excuses to leave me all by myself and they can just go talk to their friends and sit around in the office and doing nothing? One excuse was “I’m going to get us a snack” was gone for 25 minutes

So I asked to leave work and I did. I had no idea where they were and I couldn’t contact anyone. What if someone got hurt? What if I got hurt? What if a bad emergency has happened? Was it bad that I put my foot down and asked to leave? The supervisors and other workers said it wasn’t right what they were doing either.

Can I just note we were OVERSTAFFED and that I have worked with these people a lot and I’m not the only one they’ve done this too. They’re known for this.

I accidentally became a lead teacher in an 18M+ room. Currently all of the children are 2 years old. I’ve never been a lead before, nor do I have a degree in education. I’m struggling with what to do with the kids all day. I have a hard time focusing and I can never stick with writing lesson plans. Should I be writing lesson plans for young 2 year olds? Or should I just plan a few activities every week? What about art projects? Confused and needing some guidance. My director is amazing, but I feel he is never clear on what I should be doing. Thank you for reading!

My center was reported for misconduct and being dysfunctional. The cook comes in my room accusing me of doing it because my boss straight up told her it was me (anonymous report,btw). she told me to keep her out of my “issues” with the boss. She said she’d drop it but she went on and asked everyone demanding to know who it was because it “messed” her up (the report said she brings kids into the kitchen). Today I walked in and everyone seemed cold because she was once again telling everyone that I did it. My boss denied telling her that (she totally did) but I am really upset. Later I found out that my boss is even trying to kick me out of my classroom and find a replacement because i openly considered quitting based on treatment i’ve received. I’ve since asked to do breaks instead and left early today because I feel really humiliated and upset.

Hi everyone,

So...long shot..but I am in a college program and am stuck on a project.Basically the idea is; I need to create an activity that will either build: resiliency, regulation skills or relationship building.

I attached a photo of the actual outline of the project. It is meant to be aimed towards children, as I am in an Early Childhood Education program in college.

Thanks in advance guys!

https://preview.redd.it/6hu5envpgqna1.png?width=1848&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=a4970cbeec3c6643fedb9fc5a333a572bba17bc3

I posted recently about a stomach bug rampaging through my school. Kids get sick, get sent home, stay home the required 24 hours, come back on aspirin, get more kids sick.

The head of the school has kids here. She had a fever Friday and went home. Today she came back, clearly still sick. Had diarrhea that leaked out of her diaper and stained her pants in front of another mom. This mom told all the other moms about the head of the school sending her kid in sick. I’m hoping the resulting mom shaming keeps anyone else from sending their kids in sick.

Edit: Meanwhile my own kid got sent home from public school with a rash on her head. Husband picked her up and I looked when I got home. The ‘rash’ was sparkly. She got nail polish in her hair.

Edit 2: SHE CAME BACK THIS MORNING! Every mom that came in looked at this kid with the same confused look.

There are so many sources out there, I don't which ones to trust

I was told when I transferred she’s so on top of rules and blah blah. But she isn’t. She doesn’t care about how anyone feels. There is a teacher who everyone doesn’t like including the parents. The teacher yells at the kids constantly, is way too rough with them, she will pull them down to the ground if they run, yell at them if they don’t understand things (she teaches 3s), she is so mentally disorganized and never had any plans till the last minute and then blames it on who ever is co teacher. I have come to the director many times concerned that she is being borderline abusive to the kids and I was told “we haven’t seen her do that” yea she isn’t going to do it with you in the room.

I also went to my director about the hundreds of ants all over the center in the classrooms. And was told “they are harmless” that’s so gross. This is not right.

Today I was serving snack to my kiddos (18 mo - 3 years) and child A kept putting his feet on child B’s body at the table. After asking him to stop multiple times, Child B yells “I HAVE A MESSAGE!”

Does that include if some units are in progress?

I’m currently a nanny, but thought y’all might have some good insight.

The 3.5 year old I take care of has every single symptom of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) - including biting parents hard enough to leave a bruise for over a week and a half.

When with me, she’s relatively chill, but sometimes flips a switch and it turns into screaming and throwing things.

I’ve been doing some research, but want to know: what are you favorite strategies for ODD? And what are your absolute no-no’s?

Anyone else dealing with this? The bane of my existence is every morning on drop off a couple kiddos come waddling in. Clearly with a saggy diaper.

It’s not like it’s a one time thing. And I don’t even mind diapers.

But when a parent says, “oh she just went in the car!” It’s a night time diaper…. I change diapers for a living. I know what a nighttime diaper is.

I have a 2 year old kid at my daycare that kicks, screams at the top of his lungs when we take a toy away from him if he takes it from another child or because we are doing circle time. He won’t get on his mat during nap time instead he’ll move his mat or he’ll talk to some other child and play with them. I’ve moved him back on his mat today and he’ll just go back to the friend to try and chat. I’ve talked to my director about his behavior and she said we can’t always call her when he kicks my other assistant teacher or the behavioral therapist for another child in the class and that me and the other teacher have to figure out a solution together. I understand where my director is coming from but both of us have tried different things with no luck and it causes work to get so stressful. What advice do you have for a child like this?

Hi everyone, my school is celebrating International Month and we have been learning about different countries and cultures. It would be really nice if our school could arrange to speak with students from across the world.

We are on GMT +7 timezone and the children are ESL speakers but have a great grasp of English. We can arrange any time within our school day if you let us know your convenient times! Our kiddos are between 2 to 8 years. :) See you online from Vietnam!

Hey :) are their any trainings online that you guys have done that you recommend! Thanks.

What songs do you have your children practice for graduation?

My 5mo goes to a daycare and I’ve honestly been very happy with it today. He’s one of two little babies in an 18mo and under room. The ratios have been really good… the usually have 3 teachers in a room of 8. He smiles at the teachers when we drop him off and generally get good vibes

Today though we had “parent teacher conferences” and I asked how they get him to nap… hoping they has tricks I could use. It turns out when they don’t rock him they prop him with 1-2 boppy pillows and play white noise/lullabies. I was kind of taken aback cause the boppy is def not safe for sleep. They did say they transfer him to the crib. They even sent me a photo of him sleeping in the boppy… though did caption they transferred him to the crib. I could see him falling asleep somewhere and then needing to transfer… but it seems the intention is to get him asleep with it which makes me kind of uncomfortable.

Curious what the ECE group thinks? Is this just like a bouncer or rocker that is routine to get kids to sleep before transferring to crib? Am I overrreacting? Or is this concerning?