"No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings." - Urie Bronfenbrenner

As a family child care provider, you will need to demonstrate to children and families your commitment to positive guidance. First, it is important to examine your personal beliefs. Your beliefs about child guidance are formed throughout your life through your own experiences with your family and in school, your cultural traditions, and your professional education and training. Your personal beliefs about child guidance are reflected in your daily conversations with families and in your personal reactions to children’s behavior. You serve as a model for children and families in how to solve conflicts and build a safe, caring community.

Consider the following questions for yourself and the families you serve:

• How does your own family and cultural background influence your beliefs about positive guidance?

• What did you find positive about your own school experiences in terms of guidance? Were any of the six practices listed below evident during your school experiences?

• What do you wish were different about your own school experiences in terms of guidance?

• How has your education and training prepared you to advocate for and communicate the importance of a positive approach to child guidance?

• What training and support do you need in order to embrace the six principles of positive child guidance?

Reflecting on your own experiences with child guidance will help you implement positive child guidance practices. Try sharing your thoughts and beliefs with a trusted colleague who also works in the field of family child care. You may be someone that families will turn to when they need assistance with a child’s challenging behavior and with maintaining a positive relationship with their child. Reflecting about your beliefs and background may be a new learning experience or a paradigm shift in how to think about and constructively teach children new strategies and behaviors instead of using punishment to address children’s mistakes. It is important that you have a strong understanding of positive guidance strategies. You can help the families you serve who may be overwhelmed when addressing their child’s behavior.

As a family child care provider, you model positive guidance in your daily practices. You engage in building partnerships and relationships with families and children. This takes self-reflection and intentional practice over time. For some people, positive guidance comes naturally, while for others it will take practice to develop new ways of thinking about building a community with children in your care.

As a family child care provider, you must take into account individual children’s social and emotional growth and individual development when selecting appropriate guidance techniques. For example, preschool and kindergarten-age children like to help solve problems. They can sustain attention during a fifteen-minute discussion about a problem, such as, “What should we do about a broken tricycle?” In contrast, toddlers have limited attention spans (typically about three to six minutes) so providers use brief, simple directions to guide them during daily routines (e.g., “If you put your shoes on, then we can play outside.”).

Through daily interactions and carefully documented observations, you learn about children’s individual strengths and needs. This information helps you select developmentally and individually appropriate guidance practices. You will better understand particular child behaviors and choose appropriate guidance practices that meet individual children’s social and emotional development. As a family child care provider, your encouragement and emotional support for children who are learning positive social and problem-solving skills contributes to your vision of a relationship-based care environment.

Positive guidance practices promote children’s social and emotional development. As a family childcare provider, you intentionally create a safe, warm, and encouraging environment for all of the children entrusted to your care. You lead others (children, families) in behavioral expectations in your home setting. You hold the key to promoting relationship-based caregiving.

As a family child care provider, you focus on building positive, nurturing relationships with each child and family. Your daily interactions with children promote relationship-based care. Your focus is on creating strong relationships with each child and each child’s family. Your decisions each day promote relationship-based care: safety, belonging, trust, community.

Objectives

1. Describe how a consistent daily schedule and routines support positive interactions among children and providers.

2. Describe how having mixed-age groups of children in the family child care environment may affect the environment.

3. Reflect on the current family child care environment and ways to build relationships with children and families using positive child-guidance strategies.

Routines and Schedules

Parents and children need to know the family child care’s routines and daily schedule. It is important that you and the children’s parents have a clear understanding of the daily schedule and expectations for the various age groups you serve. Some family child care programs provide a daily schedule in a parent handbook or posted near the entrance or on the website.

Below is one example of a picture schedule that children can refer to each day to know what comes next and to anticipate daily activities.

Display a word and picture schedule so that children know what is happening during the day. Preschoolers and school-age children may enjoy helping you create this schedule and post it where they can see it. Following the schedule and providing consistent responsive care will support children’s social and emotional development. When children know what is coming next and how routines are organized, they feel connected to you and other children. They feel secure in knowing what comes next during their day. Refer to the word and picture schedule throughout the day.

Some challenges of mixed-age groups may lead to some children engaging in challenging behavior. Planning and thinking ahead about ways to support each child may be helpful to you when caring for a range of age levels:

• Keep in mind that guidance strategies change depending on a child’s developmental milestones. Ask families to tell you about any changes in family structures or events that may have an impact on their child’s behavior.

• Keep expectations realistic for each age range; each child is unique and develops at his or her own pace.

• Following an infant’s feeding, sleeping, and diapering schedules can sometimes be difficult when you are also caring for toddlers. Think ahead and plan for what you might do to minimize wait times for busy toddlers while attending to infants’ needs.

• Younger children may knock over or disrupt ongoing projects created by older children. Look carefully at your physical environment and how you might design a separate area for older children while still being able to safely observe all the children.

• Teach younger children to respect older children’s books, homework, projects, etc.

• Teach preschool and older children that the younger or newer members of your child care program are still learning the rules and are finding appropriate ways to express their feelings and needs. Encourage them to be models of how to safely and kindly work within your program.

Creating a welcoming and safe environment with carefully planned routines and engaging activities goes a long way toward keeping challenging behaviors from occurring.

Designing a responsive and developmentally appropriate family childcare environment takes thoughtful reflection and careful planning. The environment includes furniture, materials (e.g., toys, games, equipment), a food preparation and serving area, a schedule and routines, and a family welcoming area.

When thinking about an ideal floor plan, you need to keep in mind all of the activities that occur in the space—your own family’s activities and the activities of your family childcare program. Use sticky notes and paper to think carefully about the design of your spaces. (Group Activity)

1. Step 1:
   Draw a floor plan of your house, and add in doors, windows, and fixtures. Be sure to create a plan of your outdoor area, too. That is also part of your childcare environment.

2. Step 2:
   Using sticky notes, make a label for each activity area you will need. An activity area is a place for something to happen (art, meals, music, etc.). Some activity areas require storage, so mark those sticky notes accordingly. See the list below for some examples of activities.

3. Step 3:
   Place your sticky notes on your floor plan. Experiment with different combinations.

4. Step 4:
   Place each activity area in the space that now seems best to you. What’s not going to work? Does each space have the right kind of light, noise level, ventilation, temperature, openness, and accessibility? Are all activity areas present? What additional storage is needed? Will traffic flow easily?

5. Step 5:
   List any materials you may need to make, buy, or otherwise acquire. Some providers like to do this all at once, and others make changes over time. Safety is critical; make sure you have clear sight lines so you can see all the children in the activity areas.

Here is a sample activity list. Yours may look different depending on the activities you include.

• Family drop off and pickup greetings

• Meals

• Rest and naps

• Quiet area

• Toileting

• Homework (school-age)

• Books

• Manipulatives

• Science

• Gross-motor play

Developmentally appropriate materials are materials that fit the ability and stage of development children are in, but still allow for differences between children in skills, interests, and characteristics. The materials you have available in your home should match the developmental learning needs of the children you care for. Your own knowledge about the stages of child development will help you think about what to offer that is appropriate to the development and growth of each child. When a variety of open-ended toys and materials are provided, the items can serve multiple purposes for the mixed ages of the children in your care.

Materials can be a combination of toys and “real objects” that are sized appropriately for children’s use. Examples may include:

• Using kitchen tools as musical instruments

• Incorporating pans, funnels, measuring cups, and buckets into the sandbox

• Requesting donations of recycled food containers to extend learning in the dramatic play area

When choosing and presenting learning materials, keep in mind these key ideas:

• Materials should match the different age levels and skill levels of the children.

• Materials should be rotated monthly or as the interests of the children change.

• Materials should be accessible (i.e., children don’t have to ask you to get or open materials).

Quality. Commitment. Excellence.

Since 1982, NAFCC has been supporting family childcare throughout the country as educators make the intentional choice to offer high quality early care and education in their homes. NAFCC collaborates with local, state and national organizations to increase the awareness of and improve the quality of family childcare.

NAFCC strengthens the profession by advocating for the needs of practitioners and the families they serve, providing an identifiable national voice for all members and promoting a professional accreditation credential which recognizes and encourages high quality care and education in home-based settings.

Family Child care – Where love and learning are at home!