Summary: Behavioral Issues As A Result of Daycare One of the areas that we need to process is the behavioral impact of daycare. Our children are like little sponges learning how to do things by observing everyone around them. Especially impactful is what other children their age do or how they behave. Many parents can testify that potty training their younger child was easier because they had a role model in their older sibling. I even had one mom tell me that her 14 month old daughter taught her self to use the potty because big sister had just learned.  Because of this studies by the NYU School of Medicine and by NIH(National Institute of Health) state that children who spend most of their day in daycare were three times as likely to exhibit behavioral problems in Kindergarten as those who were cared for primarily by their mothers. There are several reasons because there are so many children for workers to focus on it is difficult for them to be consistent in discipline. There is just no way for them to “catch†everything, nor do they have the time to specifically deal with every child for every infraction. Because of this there can be an every man for himself mentality in the children or he who screams the loudest gets heard. One of the ways that daycare workers are inherently different from parents, other then the obvious, is their role is to be a manager not a trainer. Therefore, they will not take advantage of the teachable moments that are there because they role is to be a manager of the class. A final reason there are behavioral issues is sometimes a parents guilt, or the “I haven’t seen you all day mentality†tends to dilute our discipline at home.  We have just scratched the surface of this topic, listen to today’s podcast for more insight.
