Can I cut it as a day care worker, one of the most exhausting, worst paid, and smelliest jobs in Ame

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.slate.com/id/2189408/

By Emily Yoffe
Updated Wednesday, June 25, 2008, at 6:53 AM ET

Emily Yoffe chatted online with readers about this article. Read the transcript.

Malik, 15 months old, had just been moved up from the Teddy Bears to the Lions, and he was not happy about his promotion. Seeing him standing alone, hand in mouth, face collapsing in tears, I swept him up and held him. He clung to me and immediately calmed. After 15 minutes, I tried to gently place him back with his classmates, but he reacted as if I were feeding him to the lions, his breath becoming ragged with anxiety. I hoisted him back up, and he leaned his head on my shoulder. It was my second day at the Gap Community Child Care Center in Washington, D.C., which gives high-quality care to children ranging from 6 weeks to 4 years old and where I volunteered for two weeks. If you work in child care, every hour will provide sweet moments of helping a child. Every day will immerse you in the excreta of your profession: tears, saliva, mucous, urine, feces. And every week will bring a paycheck that reminds you that you have one of the worst-paying jobs in America.



For the Human Guinea Pig column, I try jobs and hobbies people are curious about—but not enough to do themselves. So for all of you who've wondered what happens at the day care center when you leave, I stayed behind to swab behinds. The Gap Center has been in business for 25 years, co-founded by Monica Guyot, a remarkably energetic, young-looking 70-year-old who still runs it. It is located on the basement level of a large apartment building, an ant's maze of rooms through which the aromas of Chef Boyardee and disinfectant waft. Its walls are decorated with the Rothko-like color field paintings of the toddler set. The center is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and most of the 110 children spend eight hours a day there. Their families are mostly poor—more than 90 percent receive financial assistance from the city's Department of Human Services so their kids can go to Gap. The few full-paying customers are charged up to $275 a week, but subsidized parents pay from zero to $65 weekly.

I started out with the youngest children, the Red Robins. The eight Robins are overseen by Muluwork Kenea, 31, and Selas Shibeshi, 24. They are immigrants from Ethiopia with a warm and gentle manner, constantly exhorting their charges to new achievements: "Look at you; you are crawling, my man!" "Come on, mama, you can reach that ball!" Kenea and Shibeshi (I am using the workers' real names and giving pseudonyms to the children) are responsible for babies from 6 weeks to 10 months, whom they watch in two adjoining rooms, each ringed with cribs and highchairs. For sanitary purposes, before entering the rooms, you first put paper booties over your shoes and for much of the day pull on and off successive pairs of plastic gloves, the kind worn by people manning the deli slicer.

Every classroom has a posted schedule that divides the day into segments. This reassures parents that each minute of their child's life is purposeful. For the Robins, 9:30 to 10 a.m. is story time, 10 to 10:30 a.m. songs and counting, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. lunch and bottles. This schedule made me think of the lovely, shapeless days of my daughter's babyhood, when I was an at-home mother. She could stay all morning in the sandbox, or endlessly toss utensils into the kitchen sink, or sit on the lawn and learn how to blow on dandelions. But that kind of spontaneity is a luxury not possible in a day care setting.

Sometimes the imperatives of caring for a group requires the women who do it (the profession is almost exclusively female) to suppress their own natural impulses. For example, Shibeshi and Kenea had all the children who were able to sit upright play with toys in one part of the room. But Maybelle, 10 months, kept dissolving into tears, uninterested in the balls and oversized keys the women jingled in front of her. "She's teething," Shibeshi explained. When I came over to her, Maybelle held out her arms, the universal sign for "Pick me up." Because I was an extra pair of hands, I could hold Maybelle for as long as she liked.

FULL story at link under ad.

[HockeyMom]

1. Well at least it isn't dangerous

I worked in Day Hab with developmentally disabled adults. I changed diapers, spoon fed, cleaned their clothes when they had accidents, etc., etc., plus had to
deal with all their behaviors, which can be very severe. At least a 4 year old cannot throw a TV at you.

I got paid $9/hour for it. Although I can sympathize with them (not paid enough for what they do), there IS worse.

[MercutioATC]

2. An ex-girlfriend had a sister who worked at a similar facility.

She frequently came home from work with bruises/sprains and an occasional black eye from dealing with the residents.

[Mojorabbit]

3. My mom had a day care center

when I was growing up. She was licensced for 40 children.I helped out there starting at 12 years old. I worked there while I was going to college. It was hard but rewarding work and a wonder to watch the children grow up. Like one big family. I don't know if the big franchise day cares are the same. I kind of doubt it but could be wrong.