U of I Study: Day-Care Centers, Parents Unprepared for Child-Care Disruptions
Published: Aug. 22, 2006
URBANA--A change in child-care providers can trigger both aggressive and regressive behaviors in small children, but worried parents often don't understand what's causing the problem. Further, few day-care centers or home child-care providers are equipped to help children through such a transition, according to a new University of Illinois survey.
"When a caregiver provides regular physical and emotional care to a child, the relationship can develop attachment characteristics. Children grieve when such an attachment is disrupted, although a child's grief may not look like an adult's grief. Parents may see the child's actions as a behavior problem," said Angela Wiley, a U of I family life specialist and associate professor.
Parents aren't the only ones who could do more to address the problem. Wiley's survey of 108 Illinois day-care centers and 117 home day-care providers found that the overwhelming majority of providers don't have a plan for easing children though these transitions.
Wiley became interested in the effects of day-care disruptions when a friend was worried about the regressive behavior of her four-year-old daughter. "Katie had started to wet the bed again. Her mother couldn't figure out what was wrong," said the researcher.
"Two weeks later, the mom learned that Katie's preschool teacher had taken another job. But the children had been told their teacher was sick, and the staff never mentioned her again. Katie was afraid her teacher had died," Wiley said.
Wiley wants to make sure parents understand two things: first, that infants and children are capable of forming multiple attachments and that it's a healthy, protective thing for them; second, that attachment to a day-care provider won't diminish the parent-child attachment--it will only enhance it.
"We used to think that infants and young children had one primary attachment figure--the mother. Now we know that it's a healthy thing for caregivers and children to be attached to each other and that their relationship can have really protective elements to it. In fact, when a caregiver relationship is disrupted, we often see a negative impact on parent-child interactions," she said.
Our society hasn't yet recognized that continuity in child care is important and hasn't addressed the problem, Wiley said. "Day-care centers are notorious for high staff turnover, and parents don't always realize the importance of continuity in child care either. Data from a recent National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study showed that 40 percent of infants had been in three or more child-care settings in their first year," she noted.
Wiley decided to do some research with an eye toward using U of I Extension educators to train child-care providers on dealing with transitions and developing materials for caregivers to use.
In answer to her survey, 75 percent of center directors reported that "children had a hard time adjusting to care disruptions at least sometimes," 52 percent said "parents have never come to them for help with a disruption," and 59 percent "did not have a plan in place for responding" to a child's difficulty with a disruption.
Seventy percent of center respondents said they had looked for resources to train staff in this area, and 74 percent were interested in receiving materials that would help children cope. The response patterns were similar for home day-care providers.
"What we'd like to do is help parents and providers recognize the symptoms that show that a child is having a problem stemming from a caregiver disruption and then give the child some attention that really addresses that problem," Wiley said.
"Ideally when a caregiver is going to take a new job, she should be the one to tell the children she's leaving, and busy day-care centers should have more than one staff person responsible for children at any one time. That way, if one teacher leaves, the other is still in place to help the children transition," she said.
If parents realize that a child is having a hard time with a teacher leaving, they can help him think of constructive ways to deal with it. "But if parents don't think it's an issue--if they think 'A teacher's a teacher, she just changes her diapers and feeds her,' they're not understanding the depth of the relationship that potentially evolves," she said.
Wiley acknowledges that parents have mixed feelings about a child-caregiver attachment. "When it comes to your child's affections, it's hard to share," she said.
"But there's reassuring news for parents too. As researchers, we know that there's something very primal about a child's relationship with the person who cares for them at night. Who puts them to bed, who gives them a bath, who does those kind of really basic caregiving tasks? There's a level of trust there that elevates that relationship above others," she said.
Parents should remember that theirs is a role no one else can fill, Wiley said. Then, when they're snuggled up with their child listening to all the things that happened at preschool that day, they can be thankful for the caring relationship their child has with her child-care provider.
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