Dawn's Thursday Thirteen, Edition Nineteen: Everything I Needed to Know About Life, I Learned From Working With One-Year-Olds

Thirteen Things I Learned From Working in Daycare

1) working in the infant room of a daycare for four years gave me an almost endless supply of patience.

2) if you reach the end of that patience, then you've probably pushed me longer & harder than i should ever have allowed.

3) when i reach the end of my patience with someone or something, it is *never* a pretty sight. you better hope you're under three feet tall and/or awfully cute.

4) after four years of working with infants, very little grosses me out.

5) after four years of working with infants, everything about puke *still* grosses me out. (not a little spit up -- i mean actual *puke*. there is a *definite* difference.)

6) four years of working with infants prepared me well for working in a predominantly male company. =P

7) temper tantrums do not impress me. they impress me even less when you are an adult. i handle them all the same way: a quizzical expression, followed by no attention, until the tantrum is done.

8) go ahead & hold your breath. all that will happen is you will pass out & start breathing again. if you think you're going to freak me out, you're wasting your breath. ;-) remember that patience? i can out-wait you any day if you are being completely unreasonable.

9) sharing is nice. but there are also some things that we just shouldn't have to share. it's just as important to learn to respect something that is of high value to someone as it is to learn how to share other things graciously.

10) being organized is key to making the day run smoothly. sometimes you have to feel like a drill sergeant, but people will thank you for it later, no matter how hard they buck against it initially.

11) have a system. find something that works for you, tweak it, fine tune it, stick to it until you can do it with your eyes closed.

12) flexibility is a very important quality to posses. no matter how well your system works or how organized you are, life happens. things don't always go according to plan. you have to be able to improvise, land on your feet & be open to possibility -- or you're just going to go crazy.

13) timeouts are a great invention. sometimes sitting by yourself for a minute & getting a little distance is all it takes to defuse a tense situation. as adults, we should be capable of putting ourselves in timeout when we recognize we need it -- because sometimes the problem really is ours & not the other person's.

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