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By Peter Orengo and Benjamin Obegi
Kenya: You send your child to day care centres within your neighbourhood hoping he will not only learn better people skills, but will be kept out of harm’s way. Instead, he comes back with new behavioural problems — increased rudeness, defiance, or aggression.
Spending lots of time with peers does not seem to have improved the social skills. It has made them worse! This is an experience shared by many parents, according to researchers from the University of Oxford.
The seven-year-study released last week concludes that your child could have picked the errant behaviour from the child minder at the day care centre, or from peers. This may put many Kenyan working parents in a dilemma on whether or not to continue leaving their pre-school children at day care centres.
It seems the choices are limited. The need to increase households’ income as the cost of living skyrockets, forces many parents to make a choice, whether to stay home and sleep hungry or leave their babies at day centres as they work to boost the family kitty.
Though the exact number of such centres in the country is unknown, Nairobi and Mombasa are reported to be having many as the need is there.
Because the country has no regulatory system for child handlers at these centres, given that the law only recognises formal education from nursery school, almost anybody can seek employment in the child care facilities or start their own.
Experts warn that some of these untrained child minders may pass on bad behaviour to the young children due to the attachment children give to their handlers at that tender age.
A spot check in major towns in Kenya reveals a shocking trend. Some centres are even run in dimly lit rooms in flats.
Geoffrey Nderi, a curriculum development expert in Nairobi, this situation must be corrected.
“We urgently need to integrate child care into our education system. The starting point is establishing a tough legal framework to run the centres. This will keep at bay those rushing for money at the expense of children’s health and cognitive development. We must also ensure the right qualifications. For now, the current porous situation only exposes our children to serious implications,” he says.
The hardest part for parents to comprehend may be that by leaving their children at such facilities they may be unwittingly exposing them to serious behavioural, intellectual and health hazards.
With some centres offering play stations to pass time, it means that we are injuring the mental acuity of millions of children so early in life.
Shapes behaviour
The University of Oxford study noted that the time we spend with children in their tender age greatly shapes their behaviour, mental acuity and intellectual development.
The more time children spent in the day care centre, the more likely their teachers were to report problem behaviours such as fights, being disobedient in school and arguing a lot, says the study which is one of the largest conducted in the US.
Dr Miriam Nambuye, an early childhood author and lecturer at Kenyatta University, says day care centres need thorough regulation.
She says: “As of now, this is an area that is not well managed in policy. This policy loophole exposes children to massive dangers. In essence, such centres should ensure that children grow within the brackets of behaviour and intellect. These are key cognitive growth priority areas that most centres ignore.”
There is more evidence against these centres.
A 1990 study by the University of North Carolina, US, established that the bond between mother and young child were not strong if the child was in a day care centre as opposed to being home with the mother, in a familiar environment.
According to Mary Nyokabi, a parenting adviser at Family Choices in Nairobi, child care centres for working parents may be an easy option but they are fraught with serious complications.
“Parents may find it easy to drop their baby in such centres. That may be a quick solution to make. But such a decision may affect the growth of your child unless the care is of high standard and readily meets the legal guidelines,” she said.
In most cases, parents are forced to turn to care centres for children less than two years old.
This age, according to cognitive development experts, is tricky because this is when the child is said to be developing a first view and impression of the world.
Where and how the child spends this period, experts warn, determines the growth of the child later in life. There are numerous studies that link the immediate environment and the growth of a child.
On behaviour, says Nyokabi, little attention is paid to the child in day care centres in Kenya. “The child care centres in our towns have nothing to offer apart from the rooms they enclose the babies in.
“How the child develops and interacts does not concern the caretakers. Most children develop habits and obscene words that they pass to their parents in the evening. The reality is that we are growing warriors who graduate from child care centres,” says Nyokabi.
Mr and Mrs James Wabwire work in major banks in Nairobi. In 2012, they decided to find a day care centre in Embakasi for their now three-year-old child, Rachel. After a year, Mr Wabwire is in shock.
He said, “My child has become combative and abusive. She hurls unprintable words at her mum and house help. We have realised that something is wrong in the day care centre we took Rachel to. Many parents, I am sure, are facing the same predicament.”
Global score
Globally, the UK has the highest cost attached to childcare centres. Latest statistics in a report titled, Doing Better for Families, show that it stands at 26.6 per cent on the global score card. This, the records say, accounts for 40.9 per cent of the average UK wage.
UK also ranks number 16 in terms of mothers going to work translating to 67.1 per cent of mothers working. The state spends 1.1 per cent of its total Gross Domestic Product [GDP] on child care.
Developing nations are yet to factor in expenditure and income from the day child care centres. But parents interviewed for this story agree that they spend a big pie of their monthly incomes towards such centres.
Nderi points at the limitations of most child care centres in the country. He told us, “The question that we must ask ourselves as we drop our children every morning is simple: What goes on the whole day at the centre? Is your child developing according to script or just becoming an aggressive character? At the end of the day, your child may be in a protected area learning exactly the opposite of your expectations.”
He also notes that the qualification of those running these centres is an issue yet these centres affect the moral and intellectual development of a child and that unless well managed they can inhibit such developments.
William Odeny, a nutritionist, throws in a children health perspective. The unregulated child care centres could have a link to the increasing cases of child obesity in Kenya.
He said, “Some centres managed by unqualified care givers pay little attention to a child’s health. After enclosing them in a room and short periods of games, the next item is to allow them eat the fast foods they normally carry. If that goes on for just one year, we do not need rocket science to explain that your baby will become obese.”
He adds that health of the child is paramount even before deciding to go for such centres, which expose children to health hazards.
A study by the American Academy of Paediatrics in 2011 warned that illnesses spread fast when children congregate together. This, adds Odeny, means that a child could be in a cycle of unending sickness due to poorly managed child care centres. In 2008, Nigeria with the support of United Nations Children Fund developed a booklet to govern the establishment of child care centres.
Good nutrition
The booklet, credited for creating order in child care in Nigeria, among other things, called for good nutrition for children in centres, safe environments, protection and security and psychological, stimulating environs that promote cognitive development.
The booklet also advocated for tough legal frameworks within which such centres operate. Key also, noted the booklet, staff at the centres must be trained especially in early childhood education.
This, reads the booklet, ensures holistic development of children in order to bridge the gap of absent parents.
The tough legal dictates helped in checking the cases of child trafficking most of which are done through such centres.
It is high time Kenya implemented these recommendations for the good of her children and the sanity of their parents.
