Aussie Childcare Network Forum

Hi Everyone

I would like your advice about how I could have better handled a situation yesterday afternoon. Here goes ...

I do FDC and I pick up 3 kids who are siblings from their school. We are walking across the car park to get to my car. I'm holding the hand of my three year old, plus the hand of Miss Kindy. Mr 8 and Mr 10 are walking behind us. They start to bicker. As we get to my car Mr 8 takes a swing at his brother. Mr 10 retaliates. I settle them down and then I move to the other side of the car to get Miss Kindy and my child into their car seats. Instead of getting into the car, the fighting starts again. I walk back to their side of the car and Mr 10 smart mouths something to his brother and Mr 8 takes off, running across the car park. I cannot catch him.

He stops at the other side of the car park next to the exit and watches us. I take a couple of steps towards him and he starts running down the footpath! I stop and go back to the car. He slowly returns to the exit of the car park. I ask Mr 10 to go and apologise to Mr 8, make peace and let him know that we need to all be in the car so we can go to my FDC. As Mr 10 opens the car door, Mr 8 is again running away. I tell Mr 10 to sit in the car. Mr 8 returns to his position. The car park is now almost empty so I drive the car and park close to the exit. I manage to get within 5 or so metres of Mr 8 and inform him that I have a fun afternoon planned back at my FDC and he needs to be in the car so we can get going. He runs away again. I try to talk him into the car but if I approach him he's off running again. I call their mother, inform her of the situation and seek her input. It's been 30 mins since school finished. The mother's response is to ask me to try and bribe the boy with ice-cream to get him to sit in the car. I then seek assistance from a teacher who was walking nearby. As the teacher approaches him, Mr 8 runs again and the teacher says to me he has a staff meeting to go to and leaves. I'm the only one left at school now. Obviously I cannot leave my car or the area to seek further help. Given he is safe where he is standing, I decided to wait it out.

Eventually, after one hour of the stand off, I call his mother for further instructions. We agree it's best if she comes to school and deals with it. She arrives and it still takes a further 20 mins for her to convince her son to go with her. At one point Mr 8 actually ran on to the road to escape his mother. She signs her kids out and takes them all home.

I go home and I'm upset and shaking. It was a dangerous situation but I found myself without the skills needed to resolve it quickly. What could I have done better? I'm reasonably new to this and after yesterday I don't know if I'm really cut out for this work at all. My own kids are so different.

Hi

Oh no that sounds awful I'm so sorry. Since you run a family day care, can't you pick and choose your clients? After that incident, I don't think those 2 older boys should be in your family day care as there are clearly issues going on there. If you don't feel comfortable with a situation then you have every right to refuse to take those children into your care.

If I was in that situation, I would have separated those boys right from the start and told them to help you with the younger children by getting the boys to hold the child's hand when crossing the road and helping you put the children in their car seats. I feel that this would have defused a lot of tension. However, I know that boys of this age are a nightmare to look after, and if they're really intent on starting a fight it can be hard to stop.

If you continue to have these 2 older boys in your care, there needs to be really strict rules in place, and if they fight again you need to let the mother know that you cannot take care of them as they are putting you and themselves in a dangerous situation and you cannot allow this.

Don't take this unfortunate situation too hard on yourself - these situations happen to the best of us and there's not much we can do except for learn from it and move on.

My advice to you is: cut your losses, you don't want to risk being put in the same situation twice, and look for some new clients for your family day care. Until then, I would offer to still take care of the younger child, but don't let the mother bully you into letting the 2 boys stay on in your care as that's not fair. You have every right to refuse.

I hope this helps good luck

Thank you both for replying to my post. I really appreciate your empathy and very sensible advice.

What's happened since then?
The next day none of the kids went to school/FDC. The mother said they were sick and she couldn't resist saying that Mr 8 was probably sick since he was out so long in the cold. Hmmm. It was so challenging and at the time very difficult to think clearly what I needed to do. I did end up waiting it out for an hour - total time from school ending to their mother picking them up was approx. 2 hours. Especially near the end my 3 year old was really needing to go to the toilet, Miss Kindy was saying 'I want to go to your house and paint' every couple of seconds, even Mr 10 is saying 'I'm hungry, let's go' - all adds to the pressure!

I have considered whether I want to continue the enrolment for Mr 8 and 10. I decided that for now I will continue. I had a good talk with the parents, and then the kids so everyone is clear on the rules of my FDC. I put the rules in writing to reinforce what I expect. I said that last week's incident can be taken as a first and final warning and if I can't get co-operation from the kids then I can't continue to be their Educator/Carer. I hope it doesn't come to that though. This week has been far better so far!

Once again, thanks for sharing your wisdom!