I drafted this post sometime back when I was having a tough day. Tough days come and go. There are many different factors that come into play on hard days. I thought that now, on a wonderful day, I should finish writing this post and share it with the world. Here is how to handle tough days in an infant and toddler classroom.
First things first, caring for other people’s children is not for everyone. There are some very real challenges in caring for other people children but there are also some very real rewards. At the end of the week, the rewards usually outweigh the challenges. I do want to discuss how to handle tough days because they can sideline you. Everyone needs to be prepared for challenging days because they happen. This is what I do in the moment and how I prepare ahead of time for the inevitable.
My biggest challenges, personally, in this job are the behind the scenes stuff like: licensing, grant writing, and parent issues. So when I have a hard time with the kids, that is what really get me down. If the children test my patience, that can really make me wonder if I’m on the right path.
Here are my thoughts from one day in March when everything seemed to be a challenge:
I thought about quitting all day today. This job is HARD. The one year old, comes in and the first thing that she does is push my nine month old baby with two hands right in the face. The baby starts crying and the so does the toddler. Free play continues on like this until snack when the two year old throws his cup of chedder bunny crackers across the room. During outside time, the highlight of my day, I struggle to push the stroller through ice and snow only to turn around halfway to the park because the sidewalk isn’t plowed well enough for my four passenger stroller to get by. I decide to settle for the park outside our house turn the stroller around, of course this upsets the two-year-old, he shouts his protest for the next 10 mins of marching through the snow. As soon as we get out of the stroller the one-year-old starts crying because there’s snow on her face. The infants can’t crawl around because the snow is too deep and they dont have sunglasses and the sun is shining so brightly that I cant find an angle for them to sit at that doesn’t have a reaction of squinting and crying. Lunch and naps are just fine but I’m still reeling from getting everyone out of their snow clothes. On the occaion that everyone naps at the same time, I rush to shove some goldfish in my mouth and check my email, which I’ve been too busy to get to for a week now.
Now, this is not a typical day.
I don’t expect infants to nap simultaneously. Toddlers on the other hand, I do expect them to nap at our scheduled time. When infants and toddler mix, there can be some nap time challenges. I do have a policy on behavior guidance, recieve my handbook to read up on that.
What can I do? How to handle tough days
Being mentally prepared for a tough day is super important. The same way that we have a pre-plan in place for abusive head trauma (formerly known as shaken baby syndrome), we should also sit down and make a plan for days that are just plain hard. What is nice is that these plans are going to look very similar. I do hope that everyone has a plan in place for abusive head trauma. If you don’t, go ahead and get my template here. It’s the same idea, really. If a baby wont stop crying, and you feel yourself getting frustrated, what will you do? You need to redirect that frustration to keep everyone safe.
One thing that I have started doing is changing my tone of voice. It has now become a habit, I can hear it happening without thinking about it. Admittedly, it started off from a place of shame. I knew that, during my frustrated moments, I would never speak to children that way if their parents were here. I made sure to always pretend that their parents were in the room while I was speaking to them. This is helpful even when you’re not frustrated.
Here’s what I do in the moment:
- I take a deep breath, which helps bring the need for a change to my awareness
- Bring the volume of my voice down
- Soften the tone of my voice
- Slow down the pace of my words
It really does help wonders! I highly recommend starting here if you need a little bit of help bringing some peace into your day. Children are very receptive to their care providers verbal and non-verbal communication. I hope that this was helpful insight on how to handle tough days. Let me know about some of your toughest days in the comments.