Homecare??

Sometimes the best childcare is informal. Family childcare for children under three is the best childcare simply because it's smaller, the provider does not change so there is provider-child bonding, and like a child's own home, he will learn what it means to be a child there.

Now not all family childcare is exemplary, but as a USDA Childcare Food Monitor for over ten years, I can attest that all but two homes I monitored were places I would have left my own children. They were clean, bright, and filled with toys and activities and the food was good.

And not all center care is terrible. There are places where the needs of the very young are appreciated and children thrive.

Why do I think family better than center? Because little children need to know what home is like during the day. They need the kitchen smells, the warmth of someone's furniture and memorabilia around the house. They need to hear the home vibrations, the arrival of mail, the garbage man, repair men, the crackle of grocery sacks. They need the spontaneity of going outdoors with no shoes on, and playing like neighborhood children. Because in a few years, these children will have their own families and without knowledge of a working home, they won't know what to do. As it is many children don't know what to do in house play station anymore.

When a child reaches the ripe old age of three, it could be a different story. Children need the TV off, and some of the day spent exploring. If family day care does this, great. If the care time allotted to a provider is for babies who always need attention, then children needing to learn need to move on. No one can provide 10 children with everything they need if there are two or three babies needing constant care.

There are care differences everyone with a large family recognizes. There is the infant care stage, the toddler care stage, the preschool age and the school age child stage. Every stage or age requires a whole different environment. At the child's home, the environment can be shared because it's his home. But in childcare where there are too many stages and ages, the older children wait too often and that's not fair.

39% of Kids in Informal Child Care

By Nancy Kaffer

Each year, the KidsCount databook focuses on an area outside the 10 traditional indicators of child well-being, said report author Laura Beavers.

This year, the study looked at the number of and conditions for children who are in child care offered in a home-based system outside the home. In Mississippi, about 97,000, or 39 percent, of children under 6 were in such care in 2003, the most recent year for which such data is available.

"Everybody has some connection with this type of child care," Beavers said. "For children in poverty and especially for working poor families, this type of child care is what they rely on the most."

It's a figure that could have troubling implications for the state's children, said Jane Boykin of the Jackson-based Forum on Children and Families.

"We keep wondering why our children aren't reading well, and goodness knows people have spent a small fortune on it," Boykin said. "But we have talked about relationship between child care and employment, and when you see how many children we have in informal or family-based child care..."

The key, Boykin said, is state investment in early child care with an emphasis on supporting working parents.

"We're not talking about people who are going to work to buy a third car, we're talking about parents working to keep the lights on," Boykin said. "We need to invest in child-care programs that operate year round, at least 10 hours a day, and need to operate with later hours, so parents have a choice. If friend or neighbor care is the best choice, great. And if not, we don't need to have parents in a situation where they are deciding between going to work and carrying as much of a load as they can without public assistance, or care for their children."