Handling, storing, heating, and feeding breastmilk can feel like it has a lot of steps.
This printable PDF reviews how to safely provide breastmilk to infants whose families provide it, including storage, preparation, and feeding. Below, you’ll also find a video from Head Start showing an Early Head Start teacher bottle feeding an infant and demonstrating responsive feeding and interaction with a baby at feeding time.
What do you notice in this video of the Early Head Start teacher feeding the baby? How does the baby respond to her actions and speech?
In the Paths to Quality Standards for Participation, there are 13 standards that family child care providers must meet to move from level 1 to level 2. One practice states:
Each child feels safe, accepted, and protected. This is supported by daily practices that reinforce respect for people, feelings, ideas, and materials.
What does it mean to feel safe, accepted, and protected? What are daily practices that support children in feeling this way? Paying attention to each child and taking advantage of time to connect, even though this is difficult in group care, is a great start. Especially during caregiving times like feeding and diapering/toileting when children are at their most vulnerable. In the RIE philosophy of infant caregiving, this is called “want something quality time.” When the adult has a goal, but it can be accomplished mutually with the child’s cooperation, and the time can be spent in a pleasant interaction with the child rather than rushed through.
This is in addition to “want nothing quality time,” when adults spend time playing with, talking to, and observing children without another agenda. Helping children feel safe also involves self-reflection. Knowing how to handle children’s challenging behaviors is an ongoing process and requires some self-reflection to ensure that adult responses are compassionate and appropriate and demonstrate to the child that the adult isn’t a threat. It’s easy to forget that adults are many times the size of a young child and can easily feel frightening to them. As Circle of Security says, the adult must choose to be “bigger, stronger, wiser, and kind.”
Respect for ideas is simply listening to children and helping them have discussions together in a way that allows for free expression of thoughts without ridicule.
Respect for materials might be more complicated. One of the greatest frustrations in family child care can be broken materials! But daily practices that can support respect for materials might include helping children choose the right materials for their chosen activity (throwing sponge balls instead of blocks), and teaching and modeling appropriate use of materials such as paintbrushes and markers.
Reflection:
- How can you tell when a child is feeling safe?
- What frequent occurrence is most likely to dysregulate you? Spilled paint? Children squealing? How can you proactively support your own wellness and calm?
This printable PDF from the CDC
outlines the steps involved for a diaper change that minimizes the chance of spreading pathogens such as pinworms or hand foot and mouth. These are crucial to the health and safety of the provider and all of the children they care for.
What it doesn’t show is the incredible opportunity for relationship building that is also present at every diaper change. How often are you just a foot or so away from the child’s face for such a focused time? Spending diaper changes talking to the child is one high-impact way to build relationships, and also make the diaper changes themselves easier. What toddler is going to try to roll or wrestle away when one of their favorite people is talking to them, or playing “this little piggy” with their toes?
It doesn’t add a significant amount of time to really pay attention to the child being changed, but the payoff in peaceful diapering and overall relationship can’t be overstated!
The winter season brings with it added hazards. Child care providers can take steps to keep children safe from winter hazards.
Children need extra protection from cold weather as they are not able to regulate their body temperature. It’s vital that children wear appropriate clothing for the weather.
- Wear layers of loose-fitting, lightweight clothing
- Wear a hat, coat, and gloves/mittens
- Caregivers should check children’s extremities for normal color and warmth at least every 15 minutes
This infographic created by the National Weather Service serves as a great tool to help guide what clothing is needed in the cold weather.
A safe environment that promotes health is the baseline expectation for a child care home. There are many policies and procedures to ensure that you, your family, and the children you care for remain healthy and safe year-round.
This webinar discusses how providers can work to support all children in becoming empathetic community members.
Consider: How do the principles of safety needs and growing needs influence how you plan your program? How can you prioritize building secure attachment with the children in your program?
Keeping the children in your care safe is a constant concern. The Head Start Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center has created a tip sheet for families about safety and injury prevention for young children that offers helpful guidelines for at home, outside, in water and in vehicles. This resource can be a helpful checklist to share with families.
Safety and Injury Prevention Tip Sheet
Mother helping daughter (2yrs) put on coat
As of November 13, 2023, there have been 22 reports of illness potentially linked to recalled product submitted to FDA. As part of this investigation, FDA and state partners are collecting and analyzing additional product samples of fruit puree and applesauce pouches. At this time, sample analyses have not shown elevated levels of lead in any non-recalled products.
- Consumers should not eat, sell, or serve recalled WanaBana, Schnucks, or Weis-brand apple cinnamon pouches and should discard them.
- These products have a long shelf life. Consumers should check their homes and discard these products.
- Most children have no obvious immediate symptoms of lead exposure. If there’s suspicion that a child may have been exposed to lead, parents should talk to their child’s healthcare provider about getting a blood test.
- Contact your healthcare provider if you think you may have symptoms of lead toxicity after eating recalled fruit pouches.
This four-part webinar with printable posters and resources from the National Center for Healthy Housing is specifically created for family child care providers to partner with families to prevent children and pregnant parents from coming in contact with lead and take necessary steps to remediate if lead is found in homes or via bloodwork, including links to financial assistance for lead remediation.
Babies born with high levels of lead in their blood are more likely to be born prematurely, be small for their gestational age, and grow more slowly than they should. Children exposed to lead may have developmental delays, learning difficulties, hearing loss, seizures, and more. Family child care providers can be great advocates for families in getting children tested for lead exposure and spreading information about places lead-containing materials may be hiding.
View all materials here: Lead-Safe Toolkit for Home-Based Child Care | NCHH
Staying informed about recalls that might impact your materials is one way to be sure that the items you and your children use each day are safe for them. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is the organization that tracks safety issues as well as voluntary and mandatory recalls for all the products in our homes, like the pictured cups which were recalled for lead level violations in July 2023.
To search or browse recalls, visit Recalls | CPSC.gov
To sign up for email updates from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which will notify you of recalls and safety alerts, go to: Subscriptions | CPSC.gov