CONSULTATION WORK WITH DIRECTORS OF CHILDCARE CENTERS

 B. Kay Campbell

             Consulting to early childhood educators and caregivers on behalf of the children in their care is a complex and rewarding task.  In this report I shall discuss the process of helping caregivers examine and solve their workday problems with greater flexibility, compassion, and respect for children, for parents, and for themselves.  Case material will demonstrate the broad range of administrative responsibilities, classroom management, family dynamics, child psychopathology, and developmental crises that confront the caregivers on a daily basis.

Introduction to Community Consultation Work

            My work as a childcare consultant has been in conjunction with the ten-year early intervention grant given to the Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development by the TRW Corporation (Streeter, 1990).  TRW’s involvement in this project is a model of corporate support for community consultation work.  First, TRW has a vested interest in children entering school ready to learn.  Second, TRW is interested in high school and college graduates leaving school ready to work.  The corporation was aware too many children were growing up with too many problems and those problems were interfering with the accomplishment of tasks critical to healthy adult life, tasks that included self-care, self-motivation, and self-discipline.  Motivated by the work of the National Commission on Children (1991), by programs such as Success by Six (United Way of Minneapolis, 1989), and the Carnegie Foundation’s (1991; 1994) mandate that adequate attention be paid to the young children in our country, TRW responded by supporting this early intervention program to address the needs of caregivers and children in childcare.

            The grant made provision for psychodynamic child therapists in five states to consult to childcare programs in cities where TRW had a presence.  None of the childcare programs participating in the consultation project had a professional or financial link to TRW.  The childcare programs were mutually selected by the consultant, the local TRW representative, and the director of the childcare program.  These early negotiations laid the foundation for the development of a trusting relationship between consultant and director (Manning, Rubin, Perdigao, Gonzalez, and Schindler, 1996).

The Directors and Staff Members

            I consult to a five-site childcare program in a large public school district.  I work with the district’s early childhood coordinator as well as five directors and their caregiving staff.  The coordinator supervises the childcare sites, 32 preschools including six Montessori classrooms, two state-funded school readiness grants, and three privately owned preschool programs that rent space from the district.  There are over 2,500 young children between three and five years of age served in these various programs.  The childcare staff members are accomplished early childhood educators with credentials ranging from master’s degrees to high school diplomas.  Some have worked in childcare for 20 years.  Caregivers refer to themselves as directors of programs, early childhood educators, head teachers, assistant teachers, and aides.  They refer to childcare rooms as “classrooms” and often to their childcare program as “school.”  The history of the nursery school and daycare movement in America reveals the origin of this nomenclature.

The Children in Childcare

            The majority of children in our programs are drawn from well-established, racially mixed communities with predominantly middle-class dual career families.  There are pockets of poverty within the district, however, and children are suffering its effects; for example, there are three abandoned youngsters, all living with retired grandparents.  An almost-four-year-old boy has been in and out of six foster care homes and has just moved to his seventh.  Two distressed siblings, adopted from a foreign orphanage, have entered childcare and we have learned the three-year-old boy is deaf.  Most of these children qualify for support services at the prekindergarten level through state and federal programs.  For now, they are in full childcare.

            Poverty and deprivation wreck one kind of havoc on the children and their caregivers, but divorces and death wreck another.  Among our five programs, 20% of the young families with children between three and four years old are in the process of divorce.

            One distraught four-year-old boy faced his father’s infidelity and his mother’s depression.  In childcare he was out of control; he was irritable, short-tempered, and mean.  His parents, preoccupied with their conflict, were unable to support him or the staff in their work with him.  The staff resented the responsibility of caring for this child.  Our weekly group meetings allowed the directors to follow the troubles of this family for many months and eventually they were able to revise their critical, angry attitudes.  They became more patient and developed not only sympathy and greater understanding of this family in particular, but of other divorcing families in general.  They grew to appreciate the inevitable difficulties within divorcing families and this appreciation allowed them to work more effectively with the children in their care.

            The loss of parental support and attention through divorce is difficult to manage but when a parent dies, the effect is even more devastating, as we learned at one of the programs.  The young, working mother of three-year-old Anthony and his 18-month-old sister, Allison, was killed suddenly in an accident while driving home alone.  Their father brought the children to childcare Monday morning because “their mother wanted them there.”  She had told him how pleased she was to have found such a good program for them.  He needed to continue the things she had felt were important for the children.  “I don’t know what else to do,” he said, “There has to be some consistency in their lives.”  He had dressed them that morning and packed their lunches, just like Mommy had done the Friday before, and brought them to school, just as he had done the Friday before.

            The staff began their morning wiping away their own tears while wiping away those of the children.  They were eager to talk with me about the accident.  They needed to know how to talk with the children about death, to learn what the children might understand, and to plan how to help them, their classmates, and the other teachers through the many difficult days ahead (E. Furman, 1974).

            The children remained in childcare while their father worked.  At the end of the day, while collecting the children, it was common for him to linger, talking with the caregivers about the children and about their mother.  The staff believed his ease in doing so reflected their own ease in talking with him about the death of his wife and its effect on the children.  When Mother’s Day approached and all the children in the program would be making a gift for their mothers, the director called the father several weeks earlier to alert him to this project.  They decided Anthony might make a gift for his grandmother, who lived nearby.  While the class worked on their flower pot gifts, they took turns dictating a message for the card that was to be included.  Anthony’s said, “I love you.  You’re a good grandma” and then he asked if he could make a flower pot for his mom, too.  His teacher thought quickly and agreed, “You could take it to the cemetery.”  He wanted to write a note that his daddy could read there and so he dictated, “Dear Mommy, I miss you and Allison misses you and Dad misses you, too.  I wish you could come back.”

            A classmate, listening, said, “I wish my teacher, Miss R., would come back.  Her grandma was sick and she died.”  Anthony said, “My mama wasn’t sick.”  And the teacher said, “No, Anthony, your mama died in a car accident.”  Another child said, “I don’t like car crashes” and turned to the teacher, “Is your mama ok?”  “No,” said the teacher, “My mama was very, very old and she died a long time ago.  She is in Heaven; she was a good person.”  The children had gathered around and Edward asked, “Anthony! You don’t have a mama?” and Anthony replied, “I had a mama, but she’s in Heaven.  She was killed in a car accident.”  The other children nodded; they knew when Anthony’s mother had been killed.  Edward was sad, too, and, unable to comfort his friend, he said to his teacher, “Miss S., I want to hug you because your mama died.”

What Does Childcare Require of the Staff?

            Many of today’s preschool children -- our preschool children -- spend 55 hours a week in childcare programs.  They arrive, still sleepy, at 7:00 a.m. and leave, weary, at 6:00 p.m.  Most are collected by their mothers, some by their fathers, and a few by relatives and friends.  They leave behind a cadre of caregivers who have looked after them during the day -- two or three in the morning, two or three in the afternoon, and if the program is very large, an additional caregiver during the midday.  Caregiver/child ratios for three- to five-year-olds vary from state to state.  Our program is 1:10.  In Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee the ratio is 1:20 (Snow, Teleki, and Reguero-de-Atiles, 1996).  With our 1:10 ratio, by the end of every day a child may have interacted with five or more adults and at least 25 children, all of whom are in various stages of development.

            Caregivers worry about the children in their care.  Sometimes it is difficult for them to let the children leave at night; sometimes they are reluctant to welcome them in the morning.  One cannot care for young children every day and not be confronted with powerful and, at times, conflicting emotions arising from within oneself and appearing from outside oneself.

            Caregivers worry, too, about how to stay within the guidelines established by state agencies licensing childcare facilities.  Manuals are hefty and detailed, with rules that don’t easily translate into practical loving care of small children.  For example, preschoolers who have not yet mastered toileting must be observed in the bathrooms according to state regulations.  Others, who have, are expected to go to the bathroom in supervised groups and perform on command.  Many preschoolers, entering our school-based childcare program, have just accomplished this self-care task of staying clean and dry.  But under the stress of separation and the newness of the setting, the staff, and the other children, they often lose what they have newly mastered.  Toileting issues are commonly discussed, and not only among the staff.  Erna Furman (1997) described how preoccupied small children are with the processes of urinating and defecating.  “Have you ever gone for a walk with a two- or three-year-old?” she asked.  “They go from one dog turd to another . . . with great curiosity and excitement . . .”

            Caregivers worry about job security, staff shortages, and staff turnover.  Only a few have fulltime employment, most are parttime.  None of the childcare staff with whom I work receive health care benefits or retirement plans.  While the majority are married and protected under their husbands’ employment, there are many who do not have such security.  Balancing the need for an adequate wage, a “worthy wage” (Wayne, 1997; Center for the Future of Children, 1996) against the need for childcare that parents can afford requires careful monitoring of all the expenses associated with good childcare.  Caregivers balance budgets and keep financial records, bill parents for services rendered, and try to keep the needs of the children ahead of the needs of the program.  They want to be recognized as competent, educated caregivers, professionals who are entrusted with the responsibility of caring for children in the absence of their parents.

The Weekly Consultation

            The five programs to which I consult are scattered throughout the school district.  Each site serves at least 25 children; one serves over 75.  The programs occupy converted classrooms in elementary schools, a middle school, an early childhood center, and the district’s administration building.  All the programs have access to outside play areas specifically designed for the under-five-year-old.

            We meet weekly for two-and-a-half hours, during naptime.  The first three weeks of the month the directors and I meet together.  During the fourth week I meet, in rotating fashion, with all the caregivers of one of the programs.  In order for the caregivers to be available for our meeting, the directors of the other programs provide childcare for the sleeping children.  This arrangement is important because it indicates how essential the consultation work has become to the staff.  One meeting was held during a stormy winter day when most of the power was out in the school building and flashlights lit the room where the children were napping.  Rather than cancel our meeting, the caregivers held it in a small kitchen by the light of an open refrigerator.

            The consultation model within which I am working is informed by my psychoanalytic orientation.  The therapeutic frame is determined by our constant setting, time, and day.  The importance of confidentiality has been addressed and is maintained.  In fact, meetings begin when the door to the room is closed, clearly indicating that privacy is essential to our work.  Visitors are not encouraged and on those rare occasions when someone outside the group is present, the content and process of the meeting shifts.  It becomes explanatory, historical, but not disclosing.  Examples from the past are chosen to demonstrate a point but not to address or solve a current problem.  For example, the superintendent visited and the directors chose successful interventions to explain to him how we had worked together to help a child.  I do not begin a meeting with a predetermined agenda; rather, the directors or caregivers bring to the meeting whatever is pressing.  I do function, however, as a group leader, prompting inquiry, redirecting, clarifying, and summarizing.  I have been interpretative of unconscious dynamics while carefully respecting the group’s unique composition and their relationship to one another.

            The directors and their staff are the immediate recipients of the consultation; the children and their families are indirectly served.  I am not an employee of the school district and, for purposes of insurance, cannot function in a clinical role vis B vis the children or their parents.  I have suggested that a child may benefit from medical or psychiatric services and have supported the staff as they think through how to present their concerns to the parents.  Talking with parents is an area of great difficulty for many caregivers and I will discuss my understanding of this later in the paper.

            While I do not begin the meetings with a predetermined agenda, I do have goals for the consultation work.  Foremost is my interest in sharing my understanding of children and family dynamics from a developmental perspective.  Secondly, I want the caregivers to develop insight into their own attitudes, motives, feelings and behavior which, in turn, facilitates greater concern and compassion for the children in their care.  I have worked to develop a working alliance within the group by explaining how and why I have thought as I have, modeling an effort toward self-understanding and acceptance, and offering what Greenson (1967) would call a reasonable observing ego.  This alliance has sustained the commitment we all have to work together on behalf of the children and their families.  I have been aware of times when my explanations have been threatening or offensive as, for example, when discussing aggressive or sexual behavior including incestuous feelings parents may have for their children. I have also been aware that my occasional reluctance to attend the meetings represents worries of my own.  Supervision has been helpful in resolving those problems.

            I learned that when meetings were dominated by community news, the staff probably was avoiding something of important -- much like the Monday crust of an analytic session (S. Freud, 1912).  I learned to think about the consultation work as I thought about psychotherapeutic work.  I could see that group interactions and processes followed the dynamic patterns one might expect in any group therapy.  There were conflicts among members, specific roles, active transferences, and power shifts.  Leadership traveled.  The group was task-oriented and functioned as any therapeutic working group might.  Resistances were present and served defensive functions just as they did in any interpersonal setting.  For me to discern what was resistance and what was process required an examination of what I wanted to hear, of what I found most interesting.  My bias was on behalf of children and their difficulties.

            Eventually I realized that administrative problems were as important to understand as child cases and did not constitute a group resistance to examining problems in the classrooms.  Rather, I learned that when the group put administrative issues on the table, these were the issues that must be addressed.  Problems at the administrative level distracted from the needs of the children.  Inasmuch as the emotional availability of staff members was critical to the care of children, anything that interfered with it demanded prompt attention.  Nonetheless, hours spent discussing ratios, registration procedures, balancing classrooms, fund raising for projects, and following regulations of the licensing board were boring and difficult for me to follow with enthusiasm.

            A common problem I did grow to appreciate was that childcare programs were given short shrift compared to other programs in the district.  The caregivers felt as though they were valued less than elementary school teachers -- real teachers -- and they complained they felt like “stepchildren.”  Inevitably these complaints touched upon fears that childcare was viewed as just babysitting and was not considered a worthwhile occupation.  These fears interfaced with low self-esteem and a lack of respect for oneself as a professional.  An important result of the TRW project has been a heightened sense of value and of competence among participants.  Their opinions matter; their decisions were not only respected but were communicated clear across the country, one program to another.

           To return to the issue of resistance, when material of a personal nature was presented before the group, I felt it should be considered a resistance whose immediate intent was to direct the group away from the professional issues it must consider.  As in therapy, I found myself thinking, “Why is this coming up now?”  An example of this occurred when our coordinator left the program to care for her two young children.  The new coordinator began attending the directors’ meetings.  The transition to her leadership appeared to be moving smoothly and she certainly endorsed the concept of a consultant.  The meetings, however, felt more social than serious and I wondered about it.  I realized that the directors and the caregivers had to learn who she was and how she thought.  There was considerable risk involved in the sharing of what they were doing and how they felt about it.  The directors appeared to be moving slowly in the direction of sharing concerns with the new coordinator and bringing her up to speed, while testing, ever so carefully, for her own responses.  Until the staff felt she could be trusted, it was unlikely our meetings would become more professional.  Occasionally a child’s troubles were discussed, but more in the probing of the coordinator’s reactions than in pursuit of a solution.

The Daily Work with the Children

            One summer the childcare programs suffered lice infestation, a common plague in groups of school children.  The directors thought the lice had appeared among the preschoolers because school-aged children were attending day camps adjacent to the childcare centers.  During the school year public health nurses had busily checked heads and isolated children who were infected, but school was dismissed and there were no nurses to examine the children entering these day camps.  The caregivers were reluctantly pressed into service.  By midsummer our meetings were beginning with the latest report on the problems.  I wondered about the effect of the lice on the caregivers, having dreamed about lice the previous week myself.  Half the directors said it was so overwhelming to them to have to comb through everybody’s hair that they didn’t want to touch the children or have the children touch them.  The nervous laughter about finding nits was enough to make clear how traumatized everyone felt.  One director commented that she had worn more hair spray in her hair than ever before and realized, thinking about it that morning, that she was attempting to create a shell that the lice could not penetrate.  None of the directors wanted to comb their own hair once they arrived at work and the day began.  One said, “I don’t even want to look in the mirror so I’m not tempted!”  By appreciating their own reactions to the lice problem, the directors were able to understand what being infected with lice might mean to the children.  This led to an open and lively discussion about illness, disability, castration anxiety, pregnancy fantasies, and sexuality.

           There were frequent opportunities to discuss the sexual development of young children in childcare consultation (Rothbaum, Grauer, and Rubin, 1997).  The interest of young children in their bodies, the functioning of their bodies, and the bodies of others is both charming and alarming to caregivers.  Charming in the manner children explain their fantasies of conception, pregnancy, and birth or express their desires to be a boy or a girl, a mommy or a daddy.  But alarming when children act out their sexual feelings or turn to their bodies for stimulation and comfort.  Masturbation has been a particularly disturbing activity for caregivers to observe and they have asked many questions about its management.  Over the course of our work together they have become very sensitive to why a child may be masturbating.  One little boy had just begun fulltime childcare, abruptly separated from his mother because she had to return to work.  His orientation to childcare had been abbreviated and settling in had been difficult.  I explained that sometimes when children are lonely, they might comfort themselves by masturbating (Ribble, 1943).  The director said, “Well, he is VERY, VERY lonely.”  But she went on to consider how she might help the boy manage his lonely feelings, including talking about his missing mommy feelings, helping him stay in touch with his mother by phone and by photo, protecting his privacy, and encouraging other ways he might find comfort.  In this case, the child was masturbating at childcare.  In another case, a four-year-old boy was sexually inappropriate at home and the mother asked the childcare staff to help her.  She had been separated from her husband for months, divorce was pending, and she was distraught.  Her son, she said, “had found himself.”  He was holding onto his penis all the time.  She was worried about telling him not to, for fear she would communicate that sex was bad and he would grow up with sexual problems.  Gentle discussion revealed, however, that this boy had been sleeping with his mother since his father left the family home.  “It comforts me.  I’m so lonely, having him there has helped me sleep,” she said.  The director talked about how overstimulating it must be for this little boy to share mommy’s bed, taking daddy’s place, and added that he might be having feelings in his penis that were exciting and confusing to him.  At the same time, the director was aware of the young mother’s stress and anxiety and sympathetically acknowledged how difficult it must be to learn to live as a single parent, leaving the door ajar for other discussions.  We were aware of the narcissistic use a regressed parent may make of a child and hoped that the good relationship the mother had with the childcare director could be of help to her in managing herself and her child.

            The children and the parents were not the only ones who found sexual feelings exciting, confusing, or overwhelming.  A director brought to the group a children’s story written in 1944 called Pretzel (Waldstein-Rey) and she wanted our opinion about it.  She had ordered the book along with several others from Scholastic Books.  After she read it she said to herself, “Why, I can’t read this to the children! This isn’t the message I want them to have at all,” and she wanted to send the book back.  But she was curious about her own response.  Why did the book offend her sensibilities?  She brought it to the group for understanding.  The story is about a little dog, Pretzel, who grew to be much longer than other dogs of his breed.  He fell in love with Gretel, who lived across the street, but she would have nothing to do with him because she “didn’t like long dogs.”  He did his best to court her, even winning a blue ribbon at the dog show, but she rebuffed him.  She didn’t like the way he looked.  Then she fell into a deep hole and was in danger of losing her life.  Pretzel heard her crying and, because his body was so long, he could lower himself into the deep hole and rescue her.  She promptly married him because he had saved her life.  “Well,” said the director, “that’s no reason to marry somebody.  You marry them because you love them, not because of what they can do for you.”  There was an unconscious reaction to the implied sexual excitement associated with flirtation, seduction, and intercourse.  Her resistance to the story’s sexual meaning was lifted as the group recalled and remembered their own reactions to this story and to other stories like it.  I found myself impressed with how the group had begun at the surface of the material and worked their way through their own resistance toward sexual knowledge by way of their associations and reminiscences.  The book, nonetheless, was returned because, laughed the director, “How can I read it to the children when I now know what it means?”

            Daily work within a childcare center includes interacting with the parents of the children and caregivers have not always found these interactions pleasurable.  When I first began consulting I was confused by the terminology that was used.  As I mentioned earlier, caregivers referred to themselves as teachers and teaching assistants; childcare centers were referred to as nursery schools, preschools, or child development centers; childcare rooms were referred to as classrooms.  The illusion that childcare is school is enhanced when a program is associated with a school district.  Why is the word “school” preferred over the word “childcare”?  Somehow, our group concluded, parents must believe that if children are being educated, exposed to computers and enrichment classes, entertainers and field trips, then they are getting something good, something extra in childcare that they could not get at home.  It is not a bad thing to leave children with a teacher, in school, where they are being educated or enriched; it is harder to leave a child with a caregiver, a  person who is there to do a mommy’s work.  Better the children are in school.

            But it is difficult for any child to study all day long.  Children in childcare for ten or eleven hours a day must have time to play, to reflect, and to relate to each other.   They must learn to say please and thank you, wait their turn, and offer support to one another.  These are things that should be taught at mother’s knee.  Who really does it during mother’s absence?  A single caregiver with ten children at her knee, a janitor who keeps the classroom clean, a gardener who waters the grass, and a building principal who keeps the children safe.

            Being separated all day long is hard on children and their parents.  Both experience the anxiety separation brings.  The children seek familiar things to comfort them during their parents’ absence.  How do parents manage the long days?  We know more about how the children manage than we do about the parents.  When parents cannot be with their children, they must acknowledge the effect of their separation in some way.  Some parents deny their children really need them.  Others rationalize that they may not spend a lot of time with their children but the time they do spend is quality time.  Some parents admit feeling guilty when they are away from their children for long hours but are not able to use their guilt to help them alter their lifestyles.  Such guilt is neither motivating nor “usable” (E. Furman, 1986).  Their own needs and worries take precedence over those of their children.  Yet other parents, ambitious and competitive, turn to childcare and early preschool programs to enhance the cognitive development of their children.  They are hardworking and they expect their young children to follow in their footsteps.

            When the emphasis is upon a child’s cognitive growth and development, the stresses on the caregiver and the child mount.  Perhaps the following case example will illustrate these issues.

            Jimmy was just three when he was enrolled for childcare.  He was small for his age and suffered fine and gross motor immaturity prompting a question about prematurity.  Jimmy had been in home-based childcare before.  His parents were divorced and he lived with his mother and stepfather, both of whom were employed fulltime.  Within a few weeks, Jimmy’s primary caregiver noted his impressive need for routines and his discomfort when things were not where they should be.  He was a studious boy and could read numbers to five places on his calculator as well as the time on his digital wristwatch.  He had a remarkable memory and could recite any number of facts.  His fund of information was impressive.  He could understand maps and locate places on the world globe.  He had started identifying words in the books being read to him and his caregivers expected he would be reading to himself soon.  His mother glowed about these accomplishments and believed him to be a brilliant child.  But in childcare Jimmy seemed very anxious and clung to his Mickey Mouse doll and his calculator for comfort.  He could use a substitute calculator if his was misplaced, but warily.  He carried these objects  everywhere and hugged them tightly at naptime.  His social skills were poor, his tolerance was minimal, and he screamed with frustration.

            When Jimmy had diarrhea, he was mortified by his loss of control.  He sobbed, despairingly, that he couldn’t help himself, that he “couldn’t control it,” and he couldn’t accept his caregiver’s reassurance.  When his family was away on a trip Jimmy was not happy.  He told his mother, “I need to be at school . . .”

            Even though he looked forward to being at childcare, Jimmy had trouble making friends.  He tried to use his intellect to attract the other children, but it offended them instead.  His caregiver was concerned about his frequent comment, “Something just isn’t right.”

            It was his caregiver’s feeling that something just wasn’t right that she brought to our meeting.  We discussed what the developmental expectations were for a boy of 36 months and I introduced Winnicott’s (1953) concept of transitional objects and Mahler, Pine and Bergman’s (1975) concept of libidinal object constancy in order to discuss Jimmy’s efforts to hold onto the image of his loved mother during her absence.  Jimmy clung to his Mickey Mouse doll and his calculator, his facts and his figures, because he couldn’t cling to his mother.  His intellect was so prized by her that I felt he had overinvested it in an effort to retain in memory his mother’s good feelings about him.

            We talked about his anxiety in the context of his diarrhea.  He had been frantic when he lost control of his body and feared something was wrong with his body, with himself, when he couldn’t stop the flow.  And we talked about his need for the stability and regular routine childcare offered him and how much he missed that when his family was on vacation.  His anxiety derived from various levels of development including the loss of self, loss of the object, and loss of the object’s love.

            The group explored strategies for helping Jimmy and his family by wondering how a little boy was supposed to manage his missing feelings and keep his good memories of his mother and his  home intact when he was away from them.  On the other hand, they thought his comment that he needed to be at school, when the family was on vacation, revealed his awareness that when things were predictable he felt better.  He depended upon the familiarity of the daily routine to feel safe.

            Like most early childhood workers, the directors were pragmatic.  Practical, action-oriented solutions were usually sought first.  Then, with something to do about the problem in hand, other solutions could be considered.  For example, we talked about establishing a picture board where pictures from home could be placed and all the children could talk about their mommies and daddies, sharing favorite events with one another (McCracken, 1986).  The directors understood that when children were encouraged to talk about their missing mommy or daddy feelings, it helped more than it hindered them.

            Jimmy’s intellectual pursuits substituted for creativity and imagination, robbing him of spontaneity in his play and ideas.  But his intellect pleased his parents, whose guilt about sending their son to childcare was rationalized by their view of childcare as his “school,” a place for him to learn.  Would it help if the director met with the parents on a regular basis to discuss Jimmy and his progress?

Talking with Parents

            It is not a common practice in childcare for caregivers to meet with the parents.  This hesitancy is motivated, in part, by a fear that the parents will see the caregiver as “just a babysitter” without real authority and dependent upon the parents’ goodwill to stay employed or to stay in business.  What if the caregiver offended the parents?  They would remove the child or criticize the caregivers or condemn the program.  What if the caregiver asked too much of the parents?  Caregivers worried about overburdening the parents by requesting after-work conferences and they worried parental employment would be threatened if they requested before-work conferences.  They didn’t think weary parents should be asked to come back to school for evening conferences.  They preferred referring parents to child development books or to parent education courses.

            Caregivers were confident discussing lunches and clothing and caring for sniffles but they felt ill equipped to talk to parents about the emotional troubles of children.

            Parents have troubles of their own, too.  One trouble is the guilt they suffer when leaving their children in somebody else’s care.  Some cannot tolerate attachments between child and caregivers and undermine developing relationships.  Others are envious of the caregivers’ opportunities to be with the children and to enjoy them.  Caregivers are painfully aware of these processes and avoid confronting them wherever possible.  These emotional complications fuel the hesitancy of caregivers to meet with parents (Katz, Aidman, Reese and Clark, 1996; Manning and Schindler, 1997).  It is often easier to seek problem-solving techniques that offer clear and speedy solutions to the difficulties the children present than it is to communicate with the parents.

            However, the directors began to report more confidence when talking with parents.  They were able to offer suggestions in ways the parents could listen to and use.  “I think,” said one, “that when you have the courage of your convictions, you are more persuasive.  Working with the parents is an important step in helping the child.”  She recalled a four-year-old boy, Jay, who had suffered many troubles, including anxiety, distractability, and stubbornness, but most importantly, periodic withholding and overflow of feces.  The trouble would resolve itself only to reappear again months later.  The pediatrician thought the boy’s diet was poor and that he might have a congenitally dilated colon.  He wanted to do invasive procedures to confirm this. But Jay’s caregiver remembered Jay from toddlerhood.  Jay had trouble mastering toileting and when he was upset he would regress to either soiling himself or suffering constipation.  We wondered what was so upsetting to Jay now?  It was clear to his caregiver that something was wrong.  There had been several recent changes in Jay’s family, including the arrival of a new baby.  In childcare he spent his day clinging to his toy animal, fearing to be separated from it.  The caregiver spoke with Jay’s mother, explaining that sometimes children let their body do their talking for them.  Perhaps that was what Jay was doing?  Jay’s mother trusted the caregiver, who in turn had trusted me.  My confidence that Jay could be helped without invasive procedures was communicated to the mother and she was able to seek the help of a pediatric gastroenterologist who, in turn, provided the support and guidance the family needed to manage Jay’s encopresis.  The director said, “This is an example of how trusting relationships between adults helped a young child.”

Disciplining Children

            Caregivers draw upon their daily experience and their academic training to understand a misbehaving child.  Motivations are interpreted at a surface level.  Discipline is intended to correct inappropriate behavior at the moment it is occurring, without necessarily understanding its origins.  And when the children behave in hurtful ways it is common for adults to respond with harshness.  With insight into behavior, we are more likely to say to a child, “I guess you are angry about something I don’t understand, but I won’t let you hurt yourself or anyone else while you and I try to figure it out and put it into words.”  One very sensitive caregiver said, “I think you need some sit-with-me-time” rather than sending a distraught, angry three-year-old to time-out.  Sometimes time-out is a compounded discipline, isolating a child at a time when separation issues are powerful and too painful to manage alone.  By letting the child sit close beside her, leaning upon her strength, she helped the child restore her own good capacity to keep herself under control.  This caregiver’s appreciation for the emotional life of one child was reflected in her greater tolerance for the difficulties of other children.

            One day I visited a class and, in front of the children, the caregiver said, “Oh, Dr. Campbell, I’m so glad you stopped by to see me.”  She did not explain to the children why I was there.  Nine days later a little girl said to her, “Miss S., I’m glad you feel better.”  Miss S. was puzzled; she hadn’t felt bad.  Then she realized the child had paid attention to our conversation, thought about it, drawn her own conclusions, and then acted upon those conclusions.  This episode was more instructive than anything I could have devised to show that behavior does not happen “out of the blue,” that children require some time to process and react to events, particularly worrisome events.  This was so clear it was easy to use it to discuss how all behavior is caused by emotional responses or reactions to events, some of which are obvious and some of which are not.

On With the Work

            In preparation for this paper I asked the members of the consultation group what might be helpful to them in the future.  The directors spoke of their wish for more consultation services.  They would like me to spend a full day in each program, at least twice yearly, as a participant-observer of the process between parents, children, and caregivers.  They wanted their staff to have more time with me to discuss child development, discipline, classroom management, and work with parents.  The twice-yearly inservice meetings we had held were not as valuable as the monthly meetings with the caregivers in each program.  This is consistent with findings from the Hanna Perkins Center: The relationship between the consultant, the director, and the caregivers of any program is far more valuable than the seminar, the workshop, or the weekend conference.

            Regarding work with parents, directors respected my efforts to help them help the parents of troubled children find the appropriate services, but they wished I might have more direct intervention contact with the parents and the children myself.  In lieu of my direct assistance, we have sought help from school district personnel such as the special education coordinator, developmental specialists, and school psychologists.  But the academic and behavioral interventions are not what the directors are really seeking.  They want parents to learn about the emotional lives of children, to understand that behavior has meaning, and to respect the sensitive developmental processes of childhood.

Summary

            In summary, I have presented a model for working within the  community as a consultant to caregivers of preschool children.  The opportunity afforded by the TRW Corporation is one that other major businesses could certainly emulate on behalf of young children and their families.  I hope I leave you with an interest in pursuing consultation work in your own cities and towns.

REFERENCES

 arnegie Foundation (1991).  The Carnegie Task Force report on meeting the needs of young children.  (R. Riley, E. Maccoby & J. Richmond, Chairs).  New York: Author.

----       (1994).  Starting points: Meeting the needs of  our youngest children.  New York: Author.

Center for the Future of Children (1996).  The future of children:  Financing child care.  The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 6, (2).

Freud, S. (1912).  On beginning the treatment. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. XII, pp. 127-128.) London: Hogarth Press.

Furman, E. (1974).  When a child’s parent dies: Studies in childhood         bereavement.  New Haven: Yale University Press.