1. Professors lie and tell you its the greatest job ever.
You get your first job and you love it. Next few years past and you start to have second thoughts. The greatest job becomes the worse ever.
2. You may have to change over 20 diapers a day.
That's nasty.
3. Parents don't train their kids to go to the toilet.
Infant, toddler early preschool is an exception but when they are older and are still constantly having accidents it becomes annoying.
its more annoying when they don't have extra clothes to change into because they used up all their dry clothes.
4. The supervisor or manager can be rude.
I had a set of rude, unprofessional supervisors. How I survived dealing with rude women for over 8 years I have no idea.
5. Teachers being aggressive towards children.
Being an ECE has its heavens and it has its hells. some teachers bring their hells from home to work. If you are stuck in hell you may take that anger out on kids.
I've witnessed teachers physically being rough with a child and talking down to them.
Sure kids piss us off but, being aggressive can only make things worse and its unprofessional.
6. It becomes boring being with kids for the whole day.
You like kids, but to be with 10,15, 7 for the whole day all year doing the same thing over and over and over becomes boring and stale. you spend 70% of the day dealing with behaviours. when there are also written work that needs to be done.
7. Children are forced to play.
For school age children. I understand you have a long day at school. 4pm hits and you just want to relax. I mean That's what I got to do when I got home, I watched a cartoon then fell asleep.
In the childcare field they are very anal in having school age children sleep or rest after a long day at school.
I wish childcare was about that. But we are forced to make them play.
8. I would have hated being in daycare
At 7-8 years old I was able to stay home on my own and not cause any trouble. At 15 my family left the country for vacation I stayed home on my own caused no trouble.
Children today are just stupid.
If i had to stay in daycare doing all the boring things they do, I would not be happy. Daycare sucks for school aged children. Its not fun unless you have a gem of a daycare teacher which is rare then children are going to have a hard time.
A childcare teacher that has an interest in pokemon, comics etc is very rare.
9. Children don't listen and you can't do anything about it.
I've had many extreme children that don't listen and often got into fight and etc. If it was my choice I would have kicked them out.
10. Many parents don't care.
Relating to number 9. You tell a parent what their child did or didn't do. Many parents will just ignore you and reward their spoiled rotten child.
11. Many teachers don't care.
I felt Like I was the only one that cared. Daycare looked boring I tried to spice it up a bit yet my work which the children loved was under appreciated by staff. Many teachers sit around clock watching, doing nothing while I tried to make an impact.
12. You have to socialize with staff you don't care about.
I don't care. I'm all about work. Work related I'll talk you i'll say hi. Other than that I don't care. I don't want to do any of these staff trips, dinners. I don't care.
13. many children only spend an estimated 15 hours a week with their parents (Monday to Friday). That's 3 hours a day.
They are dropped off at 6am then got school picked up at 6pm then many have sports or girl guides after that, then dinner and sleep.
To me that's depressing.
14. Have to deal with runners.
Runners are children who will run out of the classroom, run through the school and sometimes outside due to various reasons.
Many runners will wreck classrooms and other children's belongings.
This relates back to 10 of parents not caring. Many kids think everything is about what they want when you have a room of 20 needy, over privileged children wanting the same thing or etc
My advice to potential ECE's or childcare teachers. FIND A REAL JOB.
To me ECE isn't about the pay, some places you can make bank. I did it for the children but after you made an impact and feeling unappreciated, I started to notice things that made me grind and want to switch careers.
Overall DON'T BECOME AN ECE because you'll love it at first then you'll hate it.
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