Becky - posted on 10/30/2011 ( 15 moms have responded )
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So, I am probably going to open a day home after this little one is born for some extra income and of course, I have all sorts of questions. I know there is a dayhome moms group on here, but this question is a debatable issue, I think, so I thought I'd ask it here.
If you were providing child care to a child of someone who had a significantly different parenting style from you, how would you handle this? Would you always go with the parents' preferences, even if it really made you uncomfortable, would you always go with your own style even if it made the family unhappy, or somewhere in between? What would you want if your child was in the care of someone who parented quite differently than you do?
My thoughts - there are some areas where I won't, or really can't, compromise. Discipline, for example. I would never use any type of physical discipline on a child in my care, even if the parent really pushed for it, because of the liability issues that opens up for me if the child does sustain an injury. I also wouldn't use any type of discipline that could be construed as abusive, like locking a child in a room, even if the parent told me that was what they used. Or carseats - a child in my care would always ride in an appropriate carseat or booster, regardless of what their parents' practice was.
Then there are other issues where I would probably just defer to the parents' preference, even if I didn't really agree, like introducing solid foods early to an infant. While I'm not a fan, it is up to the parents and their doctor, and as long as the child isn't in obvious distress (in which case I would stop), it's probably not doing them significant harm and isn't a battle worth fighting.
But then there are some issues where, although I do feel it's a personal decision on the part of the parent, I'm really not comfortable following through. The main example I can think of is leaving an infant under the age of 12 months (especially one under 6 months) to cry-it-out at naptime. I won't do it with my kids, and I'm really uncomfortable doing it with someone else's - and by CIO, I mean full-on distressed crying for more than a few minutes, not just a bit of fussing. So I don't know whether to say, nope, sorry, I'm not comfortable doing that, or to suck up my discomfort and go with what the parents prefer.
So in cases like that, where you really fundamentally disagreed with a particular parenting practice, but it was not a legal or liability issue, WWYD?
Editted to add, if I had my children in a day home and found out they were being left to CIO when I had told them I did not do that, I would most likely pull them out of the home.
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