Too bad it isn't full-time Montessori programmes with qualified teachers in our public schools. Most of the time it is just an exercise in socializing the kids.

I have to say that having worked in day-care and pre-schools that the children are pretty tired by 4 o'clock and a lot of them have still hours to go before their parents pick them up. Plus it is hard for the educators because the kids just want to go home.

In the morning it is the same thing because a lot of the kids have been usually bundled out in the cold at 6:30 in the morning to get to the daycare for 7:00 a.m. I thank God I was able to stay home with my kids when they were young.

Excellent points Nicola! You bundle the kids up at 6:30 they spend all day either in a daycare or kindergarten, and then still have to wait until 5:00 or 6:00 for their parents. That's a grueling day for a four or five year old.

The government can not do a better job than a parent. Teachers might be dedicated (though I have only met a few), but they can not do a better job than a parent.

Let the little ones be kids for just a few years of their lives, is that too much to ask?

"... the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery"
- Disraeli -

Hunter, unfortunately for society, the idea that "the government cannot do a better job than a parent" is blasphemy to the statists that run this province. This entire plan is nothing more than a sop to the worthless teachers' unions, providing more high wage jobs, and usurping the role of parents in the nuclear family.

Yet talk to people, and the average joe thinks it's a wonderful idea, that little johnny or mary can be shuttled off to the approved state-run facility for programming, er, learning, and address daycare needs. That this thinly-veiled liberal scheme serves to reduce the need for privately-run daycare facilities (therefore hobbling private industry) is lost on most people. That we pay so much in taxes to necessitate second incomes and lose the opportunity for 1 parent to stay home with the children is lost on practically everyone.

I wish people in this province would wake up to the fact that the more you invite government into your life, the less liberty you get from the deal.

mhb23re at gmail d0t calm

From the frenzied response to Iris Evans suggestion that children develop into better adults if one parent is at home to supply guidance, support, and nurturing, it would seem that the issue is already settled. The state and its social engineers will now take over the role of parents so as to inculcate the socially acceptable and politically correct message before the child is warped by the common sense value of the parents.
Thank heavens I have far less time ahead of me than do behind...I don't like this new world that governments, bureaucrats, and social engineers are imposing on society.

teacher !!!

who are those strange people who keep taking me away when the big hand is at the twelve and the little hand is at the six !!!

LOL !!!

I'm certainly glad this wasnt the procedure when I wuz that age. I got roughed up for the trivialest offenses; the one common denominator was I outdid the teacher's pet.

Let's give a big high five to the father who dropped off his 4 yr old son in the school yard at 8: 25 am and left him unattended. Teachers come on yard duty at 8:45 am. This child was found by a teacher literally beside himself in tears.

One of the problems I see with the whole daycare thingie is the teacher knows your kid better than you do. If your child is going to daycare and school you are spending about what four hours a day with your kid? On the weekends the kid is lugged around to malls and grocery stores while you catch up on all the things you never got done during the week. How does the child's needs get taken care of and whose values are you instilling in their lives? For some that may be a good thing but on the whole I am not in favour. I also worked with women that spent most of the day worrying about problems the child was having when they weren't there. Some things in life are worth some sacrifice and I feel kids are one of them.

The biggest flaw is nutrition. The tots are incapable of eating properly. More often than not they will eat the bits that taste better and throw away the rest. In the end we'll have ulcers in kindergarten. How effin nice!

Forget the MA. I'm holding out for an MVDr at the very least. And bilingual. And gourmet cooks. Or I won't take them black.

Thanks for the link to Robson.

mhb @1:04...I get the sense that 'more government=less personal responsibility' is ok with too many.
Whether it is health care or child rearing, or employment the masses are sadly all too willing to 'let the guvament do it.'

Liberty is a concept that is not considered.Perhaps it is too frightening.
And the next step is a pol like Obama to step up and hypnotise the crowd.

Early societies knew that there would be problems if the sequel to childhood was not productive adulthood, and they devised plans to achieve this aim. This is most starkly seen in more 'primitive' societies, with their training and rituals. Focus is often on the males, perhaps because their training is seen to be more important, and it certainly more interestng. Hoever, just as important would be the role of the women in food production, health care, clothing production, early education. An early hunting/farming group would be in serious trouble if, within its boundaries, there weren't adults to hunt, farm, cook (and that's from the raw grain to the bread or porridge), gather edible wild food, provide clothing (either from raw skin or wool), have basic medical care, etc., etc. The children had to be trained to assume these roles.

Nowadays, we've lost sight of the goal, and the efforts seem to be a wierd mixture of prolongation of childhood lack of responsibility with early sexualization of the child. Parents who do believe that their role is to produce a well-adjusted and productive adult are often denigrated as being oppresive, punitive, over-achievers, etc., by the more 'progressive' professionals. The end result is too many directionless drones and not enough worker bees.

As a society, we need to realize that the 'primitive' people had it right: if the end result of childhood is not productive adulthood (however that is defined), then the society is in trouble. That being said, the solution is NOT to have serious state intervention. Instead, the mechanisms of the state should be geared toward letting parents bring up their own children - through tax reform, subsidies, and an attitude that a parent at home is doing valuable work.

As an aside, the Ontario proposal would ensure that children spent most of their waking hours in the care of the state, leaving little time for the parents to pass along their values. Perhaps that's the idea (hidden agenda, anyone?).

school and principal and teacher need to talk to children from early age of do and don't and give them dicipline of right when they go to teen tiem they act better while in canaa all viloance is lesson missed during their early child hood of children in canada I guess

Daycare systmes need to get approved and has bad and good side about them too
time for eat is fix and if your child is not kind of eat fast kid he or she may loose weitht of stick to rule like army place as group work not individual take care some also not see day care is good for their child to stay unless some program to teach them swiming or etc

other bad thing about your child if you put your child in day that one staff has full of tattos in face and ring in noise and die hair and other staff is more classical dress and others is gay or lesbian look and other is balck gang actor all
cause your child end up mutlti charcter behvaiour and act differently since age when they reach teenager or youth
since learnign in early time is affect when they got older

and paretns can not complain about staff background behviour or dress code called them racsim while people has choice who grow their children background of them

if you belive god you do not like nany be not believe god to grow or supervise your child in early age in day care it will affect them

take care of children is importan and made more staff frustrated and what goverment pay them is not enough and thier life private life them are not good affect in day time work of them too.

if nanay leave your child hand in street and talk other staff and child goes to street what you can do about it nothign if other kid bite with new teeth your child what you can do about it nothing group child has benefit and not

can be mix and match is better to
have some day in public day care and some day in private house with person you like to teach them spritual thing in life of do and don't
not act with them bullying

====
The good thing about daycare is if you are working and like some one taking care of your child you prefer to put them in day care who so many people are supervised and more safty and security is better

while neglect can seen every where

some thing if they put their children in private they has less know what that baby siter or nany can abused the child and put the child in day care with more staff is more safe

and some put camera to watch thier kid from work or outside to see their child is doing fine

---

while if you have parents like to let your parents to take care of child while some say those parents time of grow thier own child is finish and it is not fair to let them to take care of your child when parent are old and not have energy unless get paid or support finaicily to do so while some like toput them once a week to learn more from heritage and past from thier parents

===
train teacher is important and we do not like anybody with strang background teach children bullying and hurt their freind as we see alot in high school in canada

Aaron: "The biggest flaw is nutrition."

Actually, Aaron, the biggest flaw is ... EVERYTHING about putting kids in substitute care -- that is, substitute for a parent's care.

It's well-known that children in daycare situations are far more likely to contract the disease of the week. When you have a lot of toddlers in one place, that's a lot of bodily fluids being passed around: snot, pee, poop, vomit, blood, whatever. The kids aren't wearing rubber gloves, even if the caregivers are.

Children in daycares are quickly inoculated against the sound of an adult voice and become "peer-oriented," meaning that they become socialized only to people who are the same age group as they are. I teach and I see it in the classroom every day. Years ago, when some idiot at the CBC asked me how my children got socialized, because he had discovered that I was a stay-at-home mom, I first asked him if he thought I nailed their feet to the floor and then told him that my kids were BETTER socialized than most daycare kids because they interacted on our daily outings with "kids" from two to 92.

Although it's true that on first entering a learning situation with other children, cared-for-at-home kids aren't as outgoing or as likely to take risks as children brought up in daycare situations, their social trepidation lasts only a few months. This idea that it's savvy for three- and four-year-olds to be "street smart" and that it's "bad" for this age group to be a little leery of social situations is a salve, I believe, for quite a few parents' guilty consciences.

In daycare, tots learn very early how to be aggressive and me-first -- after all, there's no exclusive grownup around to defend his/her turf as there is in a group situation where mom or dad is present with their toddler. Parents on-site tend to mediate disputes and make it clear to their progeny that hitting, shoving, shouting, and biting are not the best ways to go about solving a problem -- a luxury that a multitasking daycare worker may not have as conflict situations arise.

Stay-at-home parents have a very high incentive to have polite children as they're with them 24/7. I've often observed that parents who are with their children for little more than a harried and hurried hour in the morning (I used to have a small daycare in my home) and only a few hours at night often spoil them and seem afraid to discipline them. I suspect, in part, that it's the guilt they feel at not seeing their son/daughter for 8 to 10 hours a day and the two or three hours they are able to spend with them.

When I heard about the Ontario Government's plans for early childhood education, I groaned. This is not what our children, our families, or our society need. The biggest problem I see in our schools today, around the increasingly aggressive, insubordinate, and anti-social behaviours of a critical mass of students, is parental neglect. Nine times out of ten, I suspect that it's benign, unintentional neglect, but it's neglect nonetheless and a lot of kids are hurting and angry. That anger gets sublimated -- it's not usually articulated as these are kids, after all -- and turns into chronic antisocial behaviour.

What we need to address is parenting today and how we can facilitate one parent staying home to care for their child(ren) until they're at least school age, meaning five or six years old. Look at what happens when you take baby animals away from their mothers. They don't fare well either physically or psychologically. It's the same with human babies -- and let's face it, kids have their baby fat until at least four or five.

We need a return to a recognition of the dignity and value of motherhood/parenthood, a concept badly damaged by radical feminists -- on purpose, in order to forward a socialist, political agenda. We need to take back motherhood and understand that although "anyone" can wipe a bum or blow a nose, not just anyone can salve a breaking heart or soothe a fevered brow. Moms are NOT interchangeable with daycare workers.

And the attempt to make them interchangeable over the past 40 years by those who want the state to bring them up, not parents, has been a tragedy in the making, with the burden falling heavily on our children and, ultimately, on our civil society as increasing numbers of angry, unsocialized children run amok in our schools and on our streets.

We do NOT need more early childhood facilities. We need parents at home caring for their child(ren) and governments willing to facilitate in-home parental care, not trying to hijack parental responsibilities.

batb at 2:24 My feelings exactly! I was a teacher (now retired thank God) and I left teaching pre-birth of our children up to the time when our youngest began school. Yes, my pension is considerably less because of this, but that was a small price to pay, as neither of us wanted to have our children raised by anyone other than ourselves. It appears that with many families the priorities are so skewed that the rearing of the children is way down of the list of must haves & must do's.

Exactly, Buglady. Like you, our family took a huge financial hit because of our decision for me to stay home with our kids, but we don't regret it for a minute and jokingly talk about Freedom 85, if we live that long and our health holds out!

You can't rewind the tape. We have a very solid relationship with each of our children, now in their 20s -- and that didn't happen "by accident." Given that our children are our society's most precious "resource" you'd think governments at all levels -- urged on by a cadre of professional feminists -- would stop treating them as cash cows.

At least the CPC government has offered some financial incentives to families who wish to care for their own children with their $100/child-six- and-under/month. Those who scoff at that sum obviously make a whole lot more than my family did because $200/month/child would have been like manna from heaven.

> Excellent points Nicola! You bundle
> the kids up at 6:30 they spend all
> day either in a daycare or kindergarten,
> and then still have to wait until 5:00
> or 6:00 for their parents. That's a
> grueling day for a four or five year old.

I've got two words for a mom or dad who subjects their child to that: Abusive parent.

Nicola, batb and Buglady, you all make wonderful points and I don't think I could expand on them. I would like to point out that selfishness and materialism also drive current generations. Women have children in their late thirties, give them dreadful trend names and then race off to work not necessarily because they have to but because they want to. I've never understood why anyone would bother having children if their driving force in life is a job from which they could be pink-slipped at any time. One also sees single-parent and other broken families. Never having a father also affects kids but because it is not politically correct to bring this up, it is swept under the rug.
Ontario's proposed plan is nothing more than day-care, a social experiment that continues to fail all of us.
Just my thoughts.

OK, thanks for your thoughts. Of course, the plethora of fatherless, often single-mom, families that we're not supposed to talk about -- even though children from these families are at most risk of abuse, of doing poorly at school, and of having emotional problems -- are the cash cows for the feminists.

Feminists have championed non-traditional families, because they consider the mother/father/child(ren) model to be abusive of women -- and children (huh?). In the traditional model of the family, which offers children the most physical, emotional, and financial security, feminists consider that women are the chattel of their husbands. Absolute nonsense, of course, as most of us aren't forced to marry our husbands but do so because we love them.

Feminists have done a very good job of deconstructing the family, the cause of many of our societal dysfunctions, and then they self-righteously "come to the rescue" of single moms and their kids using million$ of Canadians' hard-earned dollars to fund pre-school and after-school programs, as well as countless other programs for "victims" of domestic strife.

NAC/SOW have been pushing for government-funded daycare for decades, so that women can attain financial "power" unencumbered by the care of their children. In this scenario, the government taxes women working outside the home, thus filling government coffers, and also begins controlling the way our children think from a very early age.

I'm encouraged to see a lot more young women staying home with their children than when my children were young. It's definitely a step in the right direction, while McGuinty's idea about early childhood education and turning our public schools into all-inclusive childcare centres is wrong.

With the state so intent on raising our children for us I have to question the purpose of lengthy parental leaves. I believe new mothers are now able to stay at home for up to one year with benefits. Might the state be saying, "We gave you a whole year with baby X. Now it's our turn. Hand him over. He's bought and paid for." Pretty Macchiavellian, wouldn't you say?

The Economist has a lengthy section in this week's issue regarding longer education hours. There seems to be a dichotomy, where poor children seem to do better when they have pre- or post-school day support, and shorter summer vacations. Well-to-do children seem to do worse.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Poor kids, as often as not, come from single family homes where drugs and alcohol are often problems. Even where the moms (it's never the dads who stay) are free from substance abuse, they're often exhausted from working two jobs just to provide. It makes sense that such kids would benefit from more attention, structure, and better nutrition.

Rich kids, on the other hand, have parents who care, provide them with the food and attention they need, and give them a stimulating environment. It also makes sense that shoving rich kids into an institutionalized environment at four is going to stultify and bore them, while beginning the inculcation of a massive contempt for adults and authority that will doubtless manifest itself in high risk behaviours during adolescence.

Now do you get it? This is the "liberal" (small-l) version of the Procrustean bed. Stretch out the poor, chop off the rich, and voila - after twenty years, the socialist utopia of everyone the same, no having to worry about the messy business of some people being smarter or more industrious than others, no untidy social engineering trying to even up outcomes.

They know, deep inside, that the chasm between rich and poor will continue so long as rich people can do a better job of caring, teaching, and feeding their kids. So, rather than let the rich do that, they'll force everyone into the same level of mediocrity. (And by "rich", of course, I mean everyone above subsistence level poverty.)

Great comment, KevinB. And, notice, that poverty in Canada is strongly tied to family breakdown: Many single moms and their kids are immediately plunged into living at or below the poverty line when mom and dad's marriage breaks down.

Are we talking about this at all? Are we talking about single-parent families that were NEVER two-parent families?

No, we're not. We don't want to offend the "grown ups." It's time for a frank discussion about which family units most and best benefit children. I can already tell you that it's not the single-parent family.

And, lest I be accused of elitism, I am from a single parent family. I know how hard it is on kids and moms, not to mention the rest of the extended family.

batb:

I'm walking through the mall yesterday with my 11-year old daughter, with all the Father's Day displays around.

One of the signs says "It takes a special man to be a father". Dear daughter snorts, and says "Or a drunken teenage boy.".

LOL!

Our poor kids don't have any innocence anymore, do they? When I was 11 I wouldn't have had a clue there was a connection between drunken teenaged boys and babies!

To play devil's advocate, there are huge numbers of people who shouldn't be parents to begin with.

For low-end trailer trash and other new democrats, this may be their only help.

Those on the upper end of the scale have ample choice not to use the system at all if they desire.

So, since there is no coercion to use the extra nanny care, what's the problem? (That is to ignore the mechanics of the big state, high tax nature of turning low-paid daycare employees into high-paid soon-to-be-teachers-union employees which is a wholly different issue.)

Jason: "since there is no coercion to use the extra nanny care, what's the problem?"

The coercion is the taking of my family's hard-earned dollars to provide a daycare service for individuals who don't want to take care of their kids, with absolutely no benefit to me or my family -- or society at large. Perhaps you are unaware that until recently, one-income families with a parent home to care for their child(ren) was one of the highest taxed units in Canada. In other words, one-income families with a parent home to care for the kids was punished for this arrangement. The government WANTS ALL ADULTS in Canada to work for the revenue they can collect on our salaries -- and for the control the state can then have over our children's thinking.

Obviously, if someone is unable to take of their kids, that's a different story. But, many parents these days prefer substitute care to caring for their own kids. Why should those of us who stay home to care for our own kids and who are paying exhorbitant taxes to the government foot the bill for a childcare service for others' children, from which we will never benefit?

Forty years of widespread substitute daycare has resulted in uncivilized, becoming increasingly barbaric, behaviour in the public square, so why would we want to perpetuate it?

A CHANGE IS NEEDED FROM WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY. ALREADY, WE HAVE TOO MANY CHILDREN IN SUBSTITUTE CARE -- SO THE GOVERNMENT CAN RAKE IN THE BUCKS FROM THE TAXES IT COLLECTS FROM PARENTS' SALARIES. WE DEFINITELY NEED MORE PARENTS AT HOME CARING FOR THEIR KIDS, BECAUSE AS THINGS STAND, FOR TOO MANY OF OUR CHILDREN, NO ONE'S HOME.

KIDS NEED A PARENT AT HOME TO CARE FOR THEM IN THE FIRST CRUCIAL YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT IN ORDER TO THRIVE AND REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.