My babysitter stayed for dinner last night, because she has a weakness for the mashed potatoes from Boston Market. During the meal, she talked about her experience working for a major daycare chain in New Jersey. She said that she was placed in a room with 10 two years olds by herself for the whole day. 1:10 is the ratio mandated by NJ's licensing standards.
However, the babysitter said that ten two-year olds is too much for one person. She said that all she could manage was changing diapers, feeding them meals, and taking them out to the playground. She spent so much time in the bathroom changing diapers that she was unable to monitor the kids left in the classroom. Some kids would be scaling the bookshelves, when she was in the bathroom and that she couldn't console the kids who cried. She was utterly burnt out by the end of the day and depressed from the isolation.
Someone once asked me what bad childcare looked like. Exhibit A.
UPDATE: Here's the breakdown by state of daycare ratios. Turns out NJ is one of the worst. It is tied with Kentucky.
Apt. 11d 
Why did she take the children into the bathroom to change them? If she were alone with the 2 year olds who would be scandalized by her changing the children in front of each other? Then she could have monitored all the children.
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carosgram — quite possibly, state regulations.
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Based on my experience working at a Maryland daycare, that didn’t sound right, so I followed the link. If what she says is true, the center was noncompliant. Look at (k)–if there are 6 children under the age of 6, there must be a minimum of 2 staff members present. That’s relaxed a bit when kids are napping, so that only 1 must be present then, but s/he needs to be able to summon another staff member without leaving the room. I don’t doubt that a lot of centers cut corners–but they should be reported.
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I can’t imagine that leaving 2 year olds and going to a separate room to change diapers is within compliance. I don’t think that changes the horror of 1/10 staffing ratios for two year olds, since you’d be pretty much occupied while changing the one even if you were in the same room as the other nine. It would be like having what dectuplet 2 year olds? Clearly impossible.
WA state’s ratios are 1/7, but, in practice, I think they’re really 2/14, which is a different story, since then the one who’s not changing the diaper can actually watch the other 13.
(We don’t have boston market anymore, and something I find disappointing).
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But it says earlier in that page that aged 2-1/2 to 4 is a 1:10 ratio. I think (k) was referring to early childhood centers, which may be a different thing. Not sure.
The bathroom adjoined the classroom, but she said she couldn’t run and stop the kid from climbing the bookshelf, while she had a kid on a changing table. She made the two hardest kids sit in the bathroom for big parts of the day when she changed diapers.
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Just called the daycare. They said they have a 1:10 ratio for the 2 year old class. Now, I’m calling my sister in law and telling her never to send her kids there.
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I am now thanking my lucky stars that I lived in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts during our daycare years. IIRC, for 1 to 2.5, the ratio was 4.5:1. I think from 2 to 3 it was 7:1 (but, as a previous post said, in all cases it was actually 2 teachers with twice the kids, and sometimes 3 teachers if an assistant was available).
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in oregon the 1:10 ratio is for rooms that have children that are at least 2.5 years old and, most importantly, potty-trained. if they’re not potty-trained, they’re kept in the room with the younger kids, where the ratio is 1:4.
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I think we have to be pretty specific about what ages we mean. the ratio in our 30-48 mo class is also 1:10 (though, again, it means 2 teachers and 20). But, in our 30-48 mo class (which is really a 30-68 mo class), the children don’t wear diapers. Some of the 30 mo are still transitioning, but the number of children who are transitioning is titrated.
I think what’s interesting me about this discussion is the differences between the regulations and their operation. We could get upset about 1:10 ratios for that age group, but I really think they can work (especially if it’s really 2:20). It depends on the kids, both their developmental stages (which aren’t necessarily directly related to their ages) and the distribution of kids. So, I’m not usually horrified by the official ratios.
The situation your sitter is describing sounds terrible, but I don’t see it as being appropriately resolved by changing the laws about ratios, which would significantly increase the cost of child care, causing other problems. the ratio really seems to depend an awful lot on the specific child, and if we set the ratios based on the child that needs the lowest ratio, then, we’ll effectively make childcare unaffordable (I guess with the caveat that a 4 year old who needs 1/1 care may have resources officially available to them). Parents who have choices make their own decision about their children based on the ratio they need.
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An early childhood program is a supervised group of more than 6 children under the age of 6–they define that. The minimums are the minimums, though, so a class of 10 2-year olds (2 1/2 is actually the 1:10 ratio, 2 is still 1:7) would require at least 2 staff members. The ratios come into play when you go out to the playground or combine classes for a movie or activity. So when you put 2 classes of 10 together, you still only need 2 adults. The other 2 staff can then go get the kids’ lunch or set up cots or set up for an activity. If one class has 10 kids and one has 11, you need 3 adults to supervise the kids and only 1 staff can go and fetch lunch, etc. In practice, there are always moments of noncompliance–a kid throws up and one adult has to go get the mop, so one is left with a classroomful of kids, but at responsible centers, these are minimal.
If that daycare is truly operating as your babysitter says (and I know that there are bad centers out there), I’d consider a call to the state licensing agency, in addition to your sister-in-law.
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hmm. Is this the babysitter we share? Cause she works at the same chain that we send our kiddo.
If so, remind me to stock my fridge with Boston Market mashed potatoes. That girl is too skinny.
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This is a big chain. Not yours, Julie. No worries.
Suze, I think you’re reading the numbers wrong. The minimum ration in NJ is 10:1. Here’s another link.
I don’t think that it’s possible to watch 10 unpotty trained kids all by yourself all day. I couldn’t do it. Most 2 year olds are not potty trained. Nearly every kid I know was potty trained around 3 years. I can’t imagine that a 20:2 ratio would be all that much better. With 20 kids, one person would be guaranteed to change diapers the entire day. That would mean 1 person for the 19 kids. That one person could make sure that nobody was climbing a bookcase, but that’s about it.
If we don’t think that Octo-Mom can watch all her kids, why do we think that one daycare worker can?
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Here’s a thought: rigorously separating large groups of children by age is unnatural. Before child care centers, if a mother had to care for 10 of her own children, the worst would be 5 sets of twins, from 0 to 4. Normally, as most births are singletons, a family could have 10 children, from 0 to 10. With a more “natural” age distribution, it would be easier for one adult to care for 10 children. At family gatherings, we can assemble a group of 10 to 15 children, of various ages, and it’s amazing how a certain mixture of ages works very well. The younger children are interested in the older children, and try to keep up with them. Without a mixture of children, though, you don’t have older behavior models for younger children to play with.
By the age of 5 or so, it’s possible to gather a set of 20 kindergartners, and leave one teacher in charge. Before they’re potty trained, though, just keeping up with diaper changes is brutal. Expecting large groups of 2 year olds to function well seems to be a back-formation from the school experience.
My children attended a small integrated preschool with 3 and 4 year olds. The mixed age group worked well. I know that many parents prefer children to be separated by “grade,” but the school worked well, in our experience. Precocious 3 year olds didn’t feel “special,” and 4 year olds who were a little slower in developing didn’t stand out. The school focussed on school skills, such as paying attention for age-appropriate lengths of time, learning to transition from one activity to another, learning to use scissors, basic letter knowledge and sharing experiences through pretend play and stories. Because the ages in the group varied, it wasn’t possible for the teachers to subject the children to excessive worksheet drills.
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I think the NJ ratios are crazy, basically.
I’m with stranger that segregating by age is also a little crazy, although in my son’s Montessori it was also clear that mixing ages has its own challenges too.
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I’m more unnerved by some of the newborn ratios — I’d much rather settle for putting my toddler in a 10:1 situation than have my newborn in a 6:1 ratio.
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“I’m more unnerved by some of the newborn ratios — I’d much rather settle for putting my toddler in a 10:1 situation than have my newborn in a 6:1 ratio. ”
Me too, but, that’s probably because of the infants we had v the toddlers we had. My toddler could talk, walk, and ask for whatever he wanted. If you left him sitting at a table at lunch, and asked him to stay there, he probably would. When he climbs the bookshelves, he does it surprisingly safely. My infant, on the other hand, needed to be held a lot, didn’t sleep very much, and needed to be fed constantly.
Penelope Leach talks extensively of the problems of segregating children (and the elderly) by age in modern society in her book: Children First.
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Julie G, potatoes don’t need to be in the fridge. They just need a dark cupboard.
Unlike children. This is what frustrates me: Our (both US and Australian) neoliberal system balks at subsidising childcare, therefore standards fall, therefore the anti-childcare people get to point at substandard child care and order women back into the home.
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