Hacker News Reader

10) Food Allergies and allergies in general are huge fun. So some kid with a peanut allergy in the day care means no peanut butter sandwiches in the employee cafeteria on the other side of the building.

11) Sometimes kids or parents aren't compatible with day care staff or management or policies, and that's OK when day care management and your management don't report to the same guy and you're not under the same roof, but it gets stressful when you're all one big family. Much like having a company bank or a company store sounds really nice until you look at some historical issues... Now you have employees complaining to their supervisor because the kids aren't getting enough zoo field trips, etc.

Thanks for the details; it makes sense to do this well or not at all. You should move the last line of your comment to the top as the perfect TL;DR: If you spend the time and money on setup, you will have an amazing workplace. If you half-ass it, you will be sued a lot.

Yeah, that would be a TL;DR although I just hit the major points, the devil (and several bureaucrats) are in the details.

I did "data consulting" for the predecessor research program to Early Head Start called CCDP when I was first out of college and it turned into knowing every regulation and rule. Its amazing how computer people become domain experts.

I should add that the Denver II screening is now free and you should check with the state your in to find out what child assessment tools you need to teach your child care staff to administer. We used LAP and E-LAP which were pretty easy and focused on what play activities the staff should do with the children.

> 3) get the food correct for the children - you need to feed them - you are now running a restaurant

Or don't provide food and have the parents bring the kid in with a lunchbox.

Good luck with that. You might want to check the state regs and know that accepting parent food gets you into a whole realm of problems dealing with allergies. Its actually simpler to do it yourself.

Our daycare in New York City which provides care for kids from 4 months old to kindergarten age, requires parents to bring their own food in.

Interesting, I could never figure out how it would work, but we were rural, low income.

What did they put on for restrictions? Was there a form? Out of curiosity did they post any information online?

I'm not sure what being rural and low-income has to do with it; can you expand on that?

They have a parent manual online - we also have a hard copy - which includes a section on food. I've copied their instructions: https://gist.github.com/pavellishin/69b9dabdd3a9ae8ecd0dce46...

(I think there's a typo there - I believe that "because we do have a commercial kitchen" should be "because we do NOT have a commercial kitchen".)

I'm going to include the list of forbidden foods here. I'm surprised that carrots and grapes are forbidden; I don't know what sort of hazard carrots present.

> NUTS of any kind. This includes nuts in cereal or baked goods.

> PEANUT BUTTER, in any form

> RAW CARROTS, in any form

> HOT DOGS/SAUSAGES link style or cut in circles. They will be served only if diced.

> POPCORN, CHIPS, SODA, CANDY, and PRETZELS are never served (except at parties).

> FRESH GRAPES are never served. In fruit cocktail, you must remove or cut the grapes.

> HARD BOILED EGGS are served only if they are peeled and cut into quarters.

> FRESH FRUIT must be peeled, pitted, and cut. One exception: bananas.

> CHERRY TOMATOES will be served only if they are quartered.

> OLIVES will be served only if pitted and halved.

> SEAFOOD is a common allergen. If there is anyone in a class that has this allergy you may be

> asked not to bring seafood.

> MEAT or CHICKEN must be removed from the bone.

So... just about everything that's not complete garbage that children eat?

I suppose these modern children need to be taught to chew their food and not asphyxiate themselves by vacuuming it down whole.

> So... just about everything that's not complete garbage that children eat?

Excluding the things on that list still leaves lots of fruits and vegetables.

> I suppose these modern children need to be taught to chew their food and not asphyxiate themselves by vacuuming it down whole.

I know you're being facetious, but small children are at a very serious risk of asphyxiation, and this daycare has four month olds which cannot really handle solid foods yet. So yeah. Modern children need to be taught how to chew, eat, and not asphyxiate. Ancient ones did, too.

> I'm going to include the list of forbidden foods here. I'm surprised that carrots and grapes are forbidden; I don't know what sort of hazard carrots present.

Grapes and Carrots are chocking hazards just like Hot Dogs and sausage. Grapes and Carrots are just not worth the trouble they will cause during such a busy time.

> I'm not sure what being rural and low-income has to do with it; can you expand on that?

People sometimes screw up and driving miles to fix the problem is an issue along with causing an unneeded expense for low-income folks. It was just much easier to come up with a dozen different meals and learn to assembly line them.

> Carrots are chocking hazards

Even mashed? They specifically say that carrots in any form are forbidden. Maybe that's just badly phrased, though.

Mashed carrots really aren't, but monitoring the quality of a mash is probably one step too far, so there goes carrots. Like I said, its a whole lot easier for your sanity to invest the money in the kitchen area and do it yourself or, if you have the business base, to get food delivered on contract.

Sadly, its a real problem every time you put the responsibility on parents. This is just the reality of two systems interacting which should be a familiar theme for the folks on HN.

I also realized I'm dumb, you can't really mash raw carrots.

I'm still not convinced that putting in a kitchen is a better approach than having parents bring food; parents need to feed their children at home anyway, so they're going to have food. And if children have specific needs, parents will be better able to handle those as well. (For instance, the room my kid is in has children aged 4-10 months - the very small kids can only drink milk, mine is at the age where she can eat some pureed foods, and the older kids are happily eating crackers and other stuff.)

Kitchens also take up space - which is probably a bigger concern here in New York than your rural area.

> I also realized I'm dumb, you can't really mash raw carrots.

I'm equally dumb then, but in our defense, someone has probably tried

> Kitchens also take up space - which is probably a bigger concern here in New York than your rural area.

Probably, but an urban area is in a much better position to contract with a local group to buy meals appropriate to the children. I look at it as a point of contention that can blow up. Your now mixing work and life in a very personal way. The easiest way to handle that is to provide the meals and document any issues for individuals that the provider (be it you or a contractor) need to handle. Avoiding problematic parental choices is worth quite a lot in the sanity of your child care staff.

> I also realized I'm dumb, you can't really mash raw carrots.

Or can you?

http://simplegreensmoothies.com/tips/carrots and http://www.willitblend.com/

Thank you for pointing out that someone, somewhere has probably tried everything with food and getting pavel_lishin and myself off the hook for being culinary dummies.

It does specifically say raw carrots - typically when mashing food it's cooked then mashed, so I'd assume cooked carrots in any form are OK.

Seems like the aim is to eliminate choking hazards and allergens.

I have friends who have run daycare centers and I have had my child in centers that provide food and don't. Providing food, as others have mentioned, puts you effectively in the same category as a restaurant. Having parents provide food seems to be the more common default.

Might be a regional thing as I haven't seen one (other than home run places) that would let you bring food expect under special dietary circumstances.

I've never found a place in my area (Connecticut) that provides food at all (besides snacks, and even then).

"Kid's at people's desks is a terrible idea"

I really, really hope those are just terrible stock photos.

Yeah. I stayed home from work a few weeks ago to take care of our six month old, as her daycare was closed. I told work that I would be OOO, but would work if possible.

Not possible. Kids require a lot of attention, and a lot of care. Maybe when she's older, and can entertain herself, but there is zero chance of me getting work done if I'm also taking care of her, and maybe a 10% chance if other peoples' kids running around.

6 months old, should have had time during naps?

Which ones? Her first 30 minute one, her second hour-long one, or her third 30 minute one? I suppose, if I didn't need to do things like make and eat lunch, or use the bathroom.

Strictly speaking yes you typically have several hours of "free" time each day while your child naps. The issue (assuming a creative job like a developer) is you have no idea how long you have, or how well they'll sleep, so basically it's very hard to get into the zone with the randomly timed ticking time bomb sleeping in the next room. :)

Further, if you don't sleep when the child is sleeping, then when will you sleep? The best thing to do when the child is napping, is to nap.

Ha yes I was stupid for a long time (as a stay-at-home/starting-a-company dad) and actually tried to work during the kids' naps. Napping myself would have been a much more effective use of my time. Took me a while to realize though.

> a stay-at-home/starting-a-company dad

I truly cannot comprehend how you can do both. Just doing the stay-at-home dad thing for a week was taxing.

lol I failed big time! Well at least at the starting-a-company thing. Kids are great so far though!

I will say this about my kid, she's usually pretty good about sleeping at night at six months old. I only typically feel like I need a nap on the weekend.

(Naturally she'll be a nightmare tonight, now that I've praised her ability to sleep.)

I have a 1 and 3 year old. Their naps never align.

As do i. 3 year old doesn't nap any more, so he just goes for quiet time at the same time as the 1 year old naps. I give him some books, and 1 toy, and it seems to work for the most part.

I hope so too. I've had to work next to a fussy baby in a office, and it is the pits. I've even taken a baby and did some walking to try to get the kid to nap. We were a child care program so I guess it did come with the territory sometimes, much like being called by a head teacher to go to a site and act as a substitute when it seemed liked the plague had arrived. I'm pretty sure none of that would fly in a normal office setting.

Are there companies in the business of managing on-site child care? It seems like setting up your own program is tough even for a large corporation.

Yes, there are companies that do the service. Bright Horizons is one http://solutionsatwork.brighthorizons.com/corporate-child-ca... (this does constitute and endorsement).