Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/what-kind-of-place-for-child-care-in-the-21st-century/5014238/
So what kind of place is a child care center or home to be? Twenty five years ago when I first considered the question, we were raising a generation of subterranean children. The answer to what kind of place in practice was clear: crowded, quite possibly underground, almost all square footage licensable child activity space, with little room for storage or active intelligence - conferences, meetings, planning - or conducting the business of child care. Some programs had the decor of a thrift shop-assembled home; others were closer to a first grade classroom, often awash in commercial displays; many were a little of both.In those days we had little vision of the enormity of the child care experience. In the process of helping a center start up an infant program in 1973 and settling a tiny little baby girl into the center, I made an idle calculation that changed my entire outlook on child care. This wonderful baby I welcomed into the center as an infant would probably spend up to 12,000 hours in child care through age seven - more time than she will spend in all of elementary school and high school. Her childhood was to be spent ...