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I'm quitting my daycare job to go back to serving in Mexican restaurants.

Over a year ago, I thought working in a daycare sounded like fun because you get to work with kids and have weekends off. I thought cleaning up feces was gonna be the worst thing to happen. I was very wrong.


When you work in a daycare, you sacrifice your own health and sanity usually for low pay. You can get placed in a room as the only adult with 10 clumsy toddlers who think they're invincible, get hurt when you turn around for a second, and then they can't tell you how they got hurt.


When you get sick, you're still expected to come in to work. You could be coughing up blood, have the head and body aches from hell, and have to go to urgent care. They'll still tell you that they're too short-staffed to let you have a sick day off, and then they'll complain about your work performance when you come in sick.


I'm a floater. Sometimes after interacting with the potty-training aged children for at least half of the day, I'm told to go to the infant room to hold and interact with babies as young as 6 weeks old. My clothes are covered in coughs, sneezes, saliva, and snot from multiple children after being in the 2-3 year old room for half the day. I don't feel comfortable exposing infants with weak and vulnerable immune systems to those germs.


When I'm in the pre-K classrooms during naptime, I let the wide awake children pick out books, puzzles, or doodle boards (1 child at a time) to bring to their mats. I didn't take naps in pre-K, so I understand and remember the frustration of being forced to stay quiet and motionless in one spot for 2 hours straight while not even tired. The front office staff came in one day, got onto a boy for having his head up, and made the children put their quiet activities back up. When they left, the room was filled with chatter, so they came back in, took 4 children to an infant room, and said to them, "See? The babies sleep during naptime because they listen. You need to listen too." It's almost as if all infants need naps and not all 4 and 5 year olds do! I looked up the "naptime rules" for the state I live in, and it says that no child should be required to lay down if they're still awake after the first hour of naptime at daycare.


I'm quitting for a number of reasons; I don't like sacrificing my health and sanity for low pay and high stress. I don't like the growing number of ridiculous new "rules" and expectations that they constantly make up with no raises. I don't like putting an infant's health at risk. I don't like being told to treat children like prisoners. You might be wondering "How is waiting tables any better?" When you work in a daycare, waiting tables will look like a walk in the park to you. I've done it before. You need a lot of patience to wait tables, but you need a special kind of patience to work in a daycare because it wrecks your soul.


What I've learned from working in a daycare is to never enroll an infant in a daycare and to take a long break with a lot of therapy before deciding if I want to go back to working in a daycare. A part of me feels guilty for quitting because of the bonds I've formed with the kids. A little boy cried all because I had to leave his classroom for my break. A mom told me that her 2 year old daughter always talks about me and asks for me. The pre-K kids run up to me for a hug when they first see me, and they love it when I participate in their Mario, Sonic, and SpongeBob trivia games. They're amazed at how much I know! 😂 Even catching a glimpse of me in the hallway makes their whole day. It's what makes quitting hard. This will not be an easy goodbye...


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MAMON!!

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What?? What if someone is sick and has to interact with children with weaker immune systems then SPREADS THE GERMS to the CHILDREN?? Aren't they suppose to be worrying for children's health and safety? Especially hygiene too.

(please correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you)


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They really don't care. Someone complained about me washing my hands "too much" and being afraid to hold the babies, so I was called to the front office. I explained that I was sick with a very painful cold and worried about getting a baby sick. They thought i was worried about a baby getting me sick, but it was the other way around. I was told, "Expect every germ and virus when you enter this building." I hope one day, a parent hears them say that. Oh, and when a child pukes, the front office staff won't contact the parents immediately. They wait until the child pukes a second time to contact the parents.

by Olivia; ; Report