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& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | JULY 26, 2000 WORK & FAMILY By Jill Hamburg Coplan Too Old for Day Care, Too Young to Be Home Alone Pre-teens need adult-supervised activities more geared to their age
Q: My business requires me to begin work early, so I send my 10-year-old twins to morning day care at their elementary school. Recently, they've been refusing to go. They say it's not cool, that day care is for babies, and their friends are teasing them. I'm worried about the social pressure they're feeling, but the boys aren't old enough to be home alone. -- P.G., Cupertino, Calif. A: You're right on one count: Peer pressure is real by age eight, when children are already yearning for independence and turning to other kids for role models and approval. But it's not their peers you need to worry about in this case. It sounds like your kids are reacting to the lack of appropriate activity where they're being cared for. Outside of school hours, "10-year-old boys need activity -- physical activity or a hobby -- music, crafts, arts, whatever their talents and interests lead them to," says clinical psychologist Frances Stott, dean of the Erikson Institute, a graduate school of child development, and the editor of What Children Can Tell Us. "Are they being given the opportunity to explore these other avenues?" she asks. If not, this setting isn't meeting their developmental needs. OTHER OPTIONS. Given that they have least a few more years (depending on their maturity and your neighborhood) before they'll be safe left at home, you need to investigate other places for them. One option is family day care, where a caregiver would take the boys into her home for a few hours. There may be other child-care programs in your community geared to older elementary- and middle-school-age child. "They're not usually called day care, but recreation programs or homework clubs," says Laurel Ruth Kloomok, director of the Parents Place Family Resource Center in San Francisco and a child-care consultant. If the cost and convenience of the program they now attend are such a good deal that it would be a hardship for you to change sites (and you can't reschedule your morning tasks), talk with your sons and their teachers about how to make the best of things. Empathize with the twins. Try to make them understand they really are better off with some adult supervision. Then ask them to help solve the problem. "Brainstorm with the children about what they can do during those hours that might be interesting," Kloomok says. Then talk to the day-care teachers about how they can better meet your twins' needs. "They need something to make them feel competent and good about themselves," Stott says. "Perhaps they can involve the boys in a big-brother kind of way, so they're looked up to and have responsibilities." Send your questions to frontierlife@businessweek.com.  Jill Hamburg Coplan has covered work, family, business, and finance for the past decade as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. She left Working Woman magazine, where she was senior editor, when her first child was born and now works solo from a home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can e-mail her at Jill Hamburg Coplan Edited by  | | |
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