A Home Away From Home, Infants & Toddlers

A Home Away from Home: Intentional Practices to Create a Home Away from Home

What is "continuity of care" you ask? The 75-plus participants at the MCC Child Care Center on March 16, 2011  found out the answer to this often-resisted concept at the presentation titled, "A Home Away from Home: Intentional Practices to Create a Home Away from Home". Many infant and toddler programs follow a model that is more suitable for older preschool children. Infant care needs to be different. Infants and toddlers are in the beginning stages of building basic trust and a sense of self and are much more vulnerable to overstimulation and less able to adapt comfortably to change in their care. Therefore, they need a style of care-giving that is consistent to ensure feelings of security, belonging and love. Continuity of care for infants and toddlers provides these very unique essentials by assigning a primary caregiver to provide continuity, from the time of enrollment to the time the child is three-years-old, or when the child leaves the program. Infants also thrive in small groups, with each primary caregiver assigned to only three or four children, or according to the state-regulations guiding ratios. These small groups allow both children and adults to focus in a more attentive manner, and promote more meaningful interactions between the adult and child involved.

In order to create a classroom that is more home-like for infants and toddlers the environment also needs to be adapted. The environment should include items that would commonly be found in the infant's home. These might include: baskets, blankets, lamps, a rocking chair, stuffed animals, rugs, child-safe plants, curtains, photographs of  family members, a couch, and crib-sized mattresses. Very often parents are willing to donate some of these items to the classroom, or use the multiple array of store coupons found in the local newspapers to purchase these items.

This extremely informative evening concluded with a scavenger hunt to the various infant and toddler classrooms to locate ways to communicate with parents, areas where children and parents can sit comfortably, things that remind you of home, items that make children and families feel included, and ways family members can see activities the children have been doing in the program.

This outstanding program was presented by Anne Barker, Program Director, Audrey Abbondanzieri, former Program Director, and staff, Justine Adams, Charlene Chadwick, Katie O'Brien, Jillian Place and Amanda Swartele.