Re: dcps out there... sleep question

Stephanie wrote:

Some further details that may be relevant that I left out. He is here only 2 days per week. So getting with the house rules is slow going since we have two days on then a long string of days off. I am having some trouble getting some other behaviors changed, like the hitting and the toy stealing. Since I am a single home provider, I cannot shadow him. He can control the hitting and the toy stealing, and understand that it hurts his friends' body/feelings when he is in control of himself, but clearly not otherwise, of course. I guess I am starting to ramble.

You obviously have to take care of the other children,
but you can keep him really close by. Even a parent of multiple
kids would do that with an ornery toddler. Have him help you
with things to keep him close.
Also, while I think that you've got a long way to go and
a lot of things to try before it gets to this, *IF* you've tried
everything and he is still too far outside the bounds of what
can be handled by you alone without negatively affecting the
care of the other kids in your care, you may have to tell the
parents that this is a child who isn't thriving in this particular
sort of setting. He may need to be somewhere with multiple
providers or something. That's not an indictment of him, his
parents, or you. It's just an observation that there isn't
a great fit between the child and the setting (should it come
to that, which I doubt).
With our preschool, I would have a somewhat different
take. We *do* have multiple teachers and other resources
available. We *should* be able to handle 2yos like this, short
of behavior that's abnormal enough to require the child to be
in a special ed preschool. But as a single dcp, you don't
have all those resources and can't be expected to deal with
all the same issues. If you were a parent of a child with
special needs, you might *have* to make decisions that would
give less to the other kids in the family for a little while
as you tried to resolve this issue, but you'd have more time
with the child and be able to achieve more consistency. As
a dcp, there's only so far you can go in "taking away" from
the other kids in order to deal with one who is challenging.
You might discuss with the parents what helps him
settle down to sleep. It sounds like they don't really
have any sort of routine, but they may have observed
something that could be of use. Does he zonk out watching
tv? Is he always held as he falls asleep? Is there a
special quiet toy or something? If you can find
*something*, you might be able to leverage it. Even if
you're not a fan of tv for the kids, you might try a
little while of a program right before naptime to
help get him in the zone and give an extra boost to
your naptime routine. Then, you can wean off the tv
and the regular routine might suffice to cue him to
sleep. (Or similarly for any other lever you might
find.)
Also, while you'd have to tread carefully
since it's not your business to tell parents how to
parent, I think it is fair to raise the issue with
the parents that this child's tiredness is causing
disruptive behavior and explain that you are working
to help him nap at naptime in order to minimize that.
You could suggest that perhaps they might want to
consider trying to get him some sleep (or at least
quiet time) during your nap time on the days when
he's not with you. I understand that might be
contrary to their philosophy, but on the other hand,
now is the start of his interactions with the outside
world where people care more about observed behaviors
than about philosophies. That creates some impositions
on families, sure, but the bottom line is that they
can't ask you to deal with a whirling dervish day after
day after day because the child won't sleep (and I
suspect a lot of the other behaviors would become
much more managable once the sleep issue is dealt
with). So, it's in everyone's best interests to
figure out a solution here, even if that means that
they might need to change their home behaviors a
bit to help out. They wouldn't have to force him
to sleep or force him to sleep alone or anything.
Even if they just had quiet time during your nap
time, it would likely help.

Best wishes,
Ericka
.

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