Daycare doubts
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Today's inspiration comes from the Yahoo B-LW Group. Every now and again you see mothers mentioning that their nurseries have been suspicious about giving small babies finger foods, and today one mother told in her message, that the
On any other field of service industry, companies are falling over themselves to stay tuned to the marketplace and to understand what their customers want in order to improve their services and make themselves more attractive. Childcare professionals (along with the health professionals) should finally start doing some research, follow what is going on in their industry and get themselves up to date on the latest parenting trends.
With all the fuzz about healthy food, Jamie's School Dinners and the child obesity concerns, nurseries should be the first ones to look into how they could improve their services to comply with the most recent scientific research. Looking after babies doesn't need to be rocket science, but if you're going to tell someone you're not providing the service they are asking for, you have to be prepared to lose that customer. There will always be a demand for daycare places for children, but no business should ever take their clientele for granted, not even nurseries.
There isn't much information available about baby-led weaning in printed form, but you can find links to the the Guidelines article here and there. Googling "baby-led weaning" brings up several links telling you that gagging is really quite normal and doesn't put the child into any kind of danger. Lukas gags more from sucking his forefinger (apparently it's habit-forming :) than from any food I've ever given him.
In the little story we started off with, the nursery teacher had resorted to ringing the pediatrician for advise. In essence, that was probably the right thing to do, but telling to the mother about it just reaks of martyrdom and sneers, especially if after they had already openly disagreed with the mother about the subject. I just hope the doctor explained the caller the difference between gagging and choking.
"daycare fought us about not feeding her purees from a jar (...) and ended up phoning up [my child's pediatrician] when she gagged on a piece of potato".I find this sort of behaviour very unprofessional from the nursery teachers. My first reaction was, are they trying to tell this mother that they know better what's best for her child? That shows a serious lack of respect, something that she shouldn't have to deal with with the current prices of daycare in the UK.
On any other field of service industry, companies are falling over themselves to stay tuned to the marketplace and to understand what their customers want in order to improve their services and make themselves more attractive. Childcare professionals (along with the health professionals) should finally start doing some research, follow what is going on in their industry and get themselves up to date on the latest parenting trends.
With all the fuzz about healthy food, Jamie's School Dinners and the child obesity concerns, nurseries should be the first ones to look into how they could improve their services to comply with the most recent scientific research. Looking after babies doesn't need to be rocket science, but if you're going to tell someone you're not providing the service they are asking for, you have to be prepared to lose that customer. There will always be a demand for daycare places for children, but no business should ever take their clientele for granted, not even nurseries.
There isn't much information available about baby-led weaning in printed form, but you can find links to the the Guidelines article here and there. Googling "baby-led weaning" brings up several links telling you that gagging is really quite normal and doesn't put the child into any kind of danger. Lukas gags more from sucking his forefinger (apparently it's habit-forming :) than from any food I've ever given him.
In the little story we started off with, the nursery teacher had resorted to ringing the pediatrician for advise. In essence, that was probably the right thing to do, but telling to the mother about it just reaks of martyrdom and sneers, especially if after they had already openly disagreed with the mother about the subject. I just hope the doctor explained the caller the difference between gagging and choking.
