Well my excitement didn't last long the other night. You see I was due to start a new course in child minding. A chance to earn money while still being able to spend time with my own son. Great! I thought, sounds perfect.
Well... I attended the introduction class and all was going well for the first hour, the course sounded well set out, it went into full detail of all the Ofsted laws and how to comply by them. how to set your prices to compete with other registered child minders and nurseries, they talked about all the training during the course and in the future once you became qualified and also talked about all the help they would give you if you needed it even after your registered as you will then be a member of the North West child minders register.
They then handed out a print out of all the areas in St Helens, it had on it how many child minders was in each area, how many children they had and could look after and then also how many people have enquired or requested a child minder in each area. The area I have just moved in looked the best one for guaranteed jobs. It only had five child minders each took their full amount of children they could look after but there was at least 50 requests for a child minder from parents. There were other areas that had childminders with vacancies for children but the work just wasn't there for them. It all looked so promising...
That was until the child minder they brought in to give her talk. She brought in two pages of A4 paper. On was side was the pro's for working as a child minder, the second was the con's. The pro's were things like -
*If you like children, this is the perfect career for you.
*It's rewarding seeing the child develop due to your work... so on and so on. They was along the same lines but there were only four points which was a bit concerning especially when she came to the con's...
I could see at a glance that the paper she was holding the con's had a FULL A4 page. The first point brought me down to the ground -
*If you have a child of your own who's clingy while child minding for others, then they can feel left out and don't understand the sudden change.
*If you try and over compensate your own child, then the other children will see favouritism and WILL report back to their parents.
*Sometimes a parent will phone to say they are working late, this could be till 7pm or 8pm, if you put you own child to bed at that time then it can cause complications and disrupt your own family time.
*If you have a partner they will also need to be vetted and will have to do a child minding course too in certain circumstances.
*If you are paid £20-£30 for a full days child care and you decided to take them out for a day to a child activity centre for example, then that could cost your full days wage so therefore try and stick to your home, parks, libraries and the likes.
There were many other reasons in those con's that helped me to decide not to go ahead with the course but it was mainly how it would affect my son. I guess I never really thought about the negative side. Still, I'm sure there are other things I could do or even continue to do this course when Alfie is older.
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