Reducing stress and avoiding burnout for daycare providers is so important!
Starting a daycare in your home can be a great opportunity for you to do something you enjoy, be able to stay at home with your children, and have the pride of being your own boss. Even though it’s a great opportunity, working long hours in the place you also call home has its own set of challenges and stress. Being able to cope with and find ways of reducing stress and avoiding burnout is essential to running a daycare in your home successfully.
Reduce Stress & Avoiding Burnout for Daycare Providers
Really it isn’t surprising that burnout is very common among childcare providers. Long hours, low pay, and the stress of working in the same environment that you live in can make daycare a very stressful and tiring career choice. Plus, working with children is a field that has a very high turnover rate already.
There are many pros and cons of starting a daycare but it’s a rewarding career for many. Even if you love working with kids more than anything it’s important to remember that it can be a stressful job.
You may end up burnt out faster than you thought if you don’t take steps to avoid it.
For me, the biggest stressors come from the business side of running a home daycare. Keeping receipts organized, recording meals, and tracking attendance were such headaches for me in the beginning. I really had to work to figure out an organization system that worked for me and that greatly reduced my stress. Also, the fact that I can’t just shut the door and walk away from the daycare space is a major stressor because even when I don’t have kids it can feel like I’m still at ‘work.’
Signs of Burnout for Daycare Providers:
- Irritability
- Anxiety about work
- Lack of motivation
- Tired/Fatigue
- Loss of patience
- Indifference/resentment toward parents or children
- Stress-related physical pains (headaches/backaches…)
- Depression
- Isolation
- Feeling helpless to change things
When I feel stressed I usually ask myself a few simple questions about my day and try to pinpoint what exactly is the trigger for the feelings of stress. Is there a certain time of day I feel more stressed? What happens during that time the sets me off?
Sometimes it can be something as simple a tweaking our schedule or reorganizing my filing system but other times it’s something more complicated like a parent issue or payment issues.
Try to identify what makes you the most stressed out then try to isolate and tweak that area first. If it’s not one thing you can easily tweak then you need to make time for yourself in other ways.
Ideas to Help You Relax & Refresh:
- Go out with friends once a week/month
- Schedule a reoccurring ate night with your spouse/partner
- Network with other providers (your local Resource and Referral Network or even local unions can get you connected with other providers.)
- Take a walk or run in the evenings
- Go on a hike
- Write in a journal
- Read a new mystery or fiction book
- Try an adult coloring book
- Read books on handling burnout or anxiety/negative thinking
- Take a bubble bath
- Get a gym membership
- Listen to music (and dance like no one is watching!)
- Give yourself some time to veg out on Netflix or Amazon Prime
- Grab your laptop and hang out in a coffee shop sans kids for a few hours on the weekend
- Go to dinner/lunch alone (no cooking, cleaning, or *gasp* sharing your food!)
- Share parental duties (I’m with kids all day so we agreed that Hubby is in charge of the bath/bedtime routine. That gives me time to get stuff done or just veg out without having to be “in charge”)
- Join a local group and interact with people who share similar interests
- Join a Facebook group for home daycare providers (you can join my group here -> Join now)
- Host a dinner party and get to know your neighbors
- Take a class at a local studio or college (even stores like Jo-Ann Fabrics or Micheals offer occasional classes in something that might catch your eye!)
- Volunteer at an organization you want to support
Make time for yourself. Doing things you enjoy or visiting with people you care about are perfect ways to reduce stress and get yourself out of that ‘work’ environment.
If you don’t take time for yourself and do things that you enjoy it can make all the stress in your life seem even more unbearable.
Side note on online groups/communities: Make sure they are positive. I used to be a member of several groups online (forums and Facebook groups) but I found some of them to be very negative. It’s definitely good to have a place to vent where people understand what you are going through. However, if you’re feeling burnt out seeing all that negativity it is not going to help. You need a group that helps you see the good things about this career.
Daycare Related Changes/Ideas:
- Change up your schedule (or get on a schedule/routine)
- Get organized
- Take a day off
- Take vacation time
- Rearrange your daycare space
- Redecorate the space
- Plan easier meals for a week or one day every week
- Reduce structured or “teacher-led” art/activities
- Rotate toys and art supplies available to kids
- Find a lending library for toys or toy rental agencies (some Resource & Referral Networks offer lending libraries for items providers use)
- Offer special classes (dance, art, music, second language, cooking) or have someone come to your home to teach the kids.
- Hire an assistant, even just for a few hours a day or week
- Hire a cleaner to come in a few times a month (<– this is my dream!)
- Get kids on the same nap schedule (obviously, infants are on their own schedule)
- Stick to your contract
- Change your hours
- Charge late fees
- Start saying “No!”
- Terminate problem families
Don’t forget…
The main causes of burnout for daycare providers are dealing with parents that don’t respect your contract and feeling taken advantage of.
The truth of it is that those feelings often come from one main issue.
Not enforcing your contract.
We usually have closer relationships with our clients than normal businesses do and because of this sometimes it’s easy us to forget that this is actually a business relationship. This is not a friendship.
You can’t let your relationship with the client overrule your policies. Providers will allow late payments or extended hours because they feel bad for the family or don’t want a parent to be upset. It rarely ends well. Hold parents to your daycare contract, don’t give them a pass because you feel like you are friends.
Also, take days off! I can’t stress this enough!
Don’t set yourself up for failure.
Find what helps you relax and recharge make it a priority. Schedule it in if you have too! Reducing stress and avoiding burnout for daycare providers is very important for your mental health and sanity. If you want a long term career in family childcare don’t forget to make time to recharge!
What do you do to avoid getting burnt out?
Looking for more post about running a daycare? Check out my daycare page to learn about starting or running an in-home daycare or shop my collection of ebooks and daycare forms in my store.
THank you for providing such helpful and useful tips/helpers! I’m looking into this for our family.
Thanks for these tips. I’m starting to feel some of them and I was planning to reorganize some of the daycare space/toys so this gives me some focus to just do that! Thank you 🙂
hello I have been doing childcare in my home for 16 years ( I turned my garage into a group childcare) I am licensed for 12 children I have 2 people that work with me one works 2 days a week and the other lady and i work 4 days a week. we are off all holidays and 1 week in July and 1 week in December. We truly have a good time with the kids and this keeps us from getting burned out !!!.
Oh are those signs of burn out all too familiar. I’m in year 10 of home daycare and currently in somewhat of a slump. Looking for ways to spark some fresh creativity. Thank you for sharing this list, will be putting some of them to use immediately!
I have been doing in home daycare for 40plus yrs.. got licensed when regulations came out for it in 80’s. I agree about the burn-out etc. I turned my 2story home into using my whole main level for daycare. I always put in my contract holidays off paid too. same as banks holidays including veterans day as my spouse helps me and is a vet. My hardest thing is trying to get parents to pay what the going rate is for my area on the average side of it. Not minimum or maximum. I hadn”t raised my prices in 12 yrs.! I was on the high end. ( people then tended to think if it wasn”t expensive u weren”t good) My prices were raised last Sept. I have to continually go back to my old prices as most families still cant afford the raise in cost. My fees are the same as what DCF offers. Also the parents just do not try to understand even tho u are getting paid to watch their precious child u do have other children to watch too. they don”t try to understand u have a group to watch not just theirs! When u do get a mom who understands she worth keeping. then there is the fact that u have good parents and not so well behaved lil ones they bring u. or vice versa. It is way easier to watch other peoples children when yours r grown up! Parents need to remember 1.) when chewing u out for anothers kids actions, that that child is not mine. 2) It is very hard to try to watch anothers child cuz they all come together at our house and are all trying to get along and fit into our group best they can and we as caregivers r doing r best to watch someones elses child that we did not raise from day 1. If u can get them ats a newborn and keep them for 4-5 yrs. that is ideal for all! It also is not a stable income. U can earn a good living but it is so unreliable. its better if u have a good savings in place or a spouse who works outside bringing in $ too.
Thanks for these tips. I start to feel that other provider has walk in my shoe .Thank you
Signs of Provider Burnout – Items listed sound about right! I called off one day this month and my director requested a doctor’s note. Had no problem spending money to take one day off because I really needed a mental break. Also please be advised, I called off on a Thursday not on Monday or Friday. It is my belief this is their form of intimation so teachers do not call off. It’s absolutely sad to say directors and assistant directors wear blinders when teachers need them most. Upper management can call off, however, when teachers call off they are susceptible to punishment.