It was May 2022, early afternoon, when I received a phone call from my daughter's daycare. The teacher was crying. My heart stopped beating.

I still remember exactly where I was standing when I answered, who I was with, what I could see. "I'm so sorry!" she started - (in hindsight, not the best choice of opening line).

It felt like YEARS before she finally told me that my daughter was fine; there HAD been an incident, but she was fine.

Every parent knows which nightmare I dropped straight into.

Babies and Toddlers Are So Vulnerable

I used to be a high-school teacher. I'm familiar with curriculum design, licensing criteria, and visits from ERO. When I was teaching, they were just part and parcel with the job.

Now, I'm a parent who has transferred the responsibility of my daughter's safety and development to an ECE four days a week, I have a new appreciation of regulations.

At high school, the risk to life throughout a normal school day is low. Teenagers - for the most part - can be left unsupervised to eat an apple. They know how NOT to fall off tables onto their heads during Science lessons. They aren't at risk of drowning in a bucket when the teacher is distracted during Maths class.

Not so in ECE. As a new parent, I see EVERYTHING that could go wrong. (There's probably a diagnosis for this!) Babies and toddlers are just so, so, bloody vulnerable.

Concerning Proposed Changes

Because of Clasp I've been closely following the proposed changes to the ECE regulations. They're doubly interesting to me and at times a little difficult to separate; how can I best support our customers to stay acorss the changes, AND disagree with a lot of them?

This blog is my little space to share my thoughts as a parent to a toddler. And as a parent, a few of the proposed changes concern me most:

Health and Safety 22: Supervision while eating. The changes allow a teacher to be in 'proximity' to children eating, rather than seated with them. Proximity is subjective, and distractions are imminent. Choking is silent.

Health & Safety 9: Sleep. The check frequency change from every 10 minutes to 15 minutes could put babies more at risk of SUID. Children could be left longer awake, crying, rubbing or scratching themselves.

Health & Safety 25: First aid qualifications. They've halved the ratio required; from 1 qualified adult to 25 children, to 1:50.

Curriculum 3: Interactions. The rule "Kaiako interact positively to enhance children's learning and attachment" has been scrapped; but why would I want anything LESS than this as a parent?! It's a basic requirement. It should remain.

Curriculum 5: Acknowledgement of tangata whenua. Also scrapped was "Services' teaching acknowledges Māori as tangata whenua. Children have the opportunity to learn about and understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi" - unlike David Seymour, I am proud of our bicultural nation. My daughter will learn the history of Aotearoa, how her ancestors arrived here, and the impact Te Tiriti o Waitangi has had on this country and the inequitable outcomes and responsibility NZ still has from our imperfect history.

In fact, Scrapping all of the Curriculum criteria. Whilst I sometimes refer to my daughter's ECE as "daycare" (sorry to all!) I know it is an Early LEARNING Centre. With no on curriculum to shape my daughter's experiences and early understanding of the world, I would feel much less confident leaving her care to others.

A Working Parent's Perspective

Contrary to David Seymour's opinion, ECE, ELC, Daycare - whatever you want to call it - is NOT about getting me back to work.

When my daughter was 9 months old and I was looking for a local service, I was not looking for any old centre so I could go and work 32 hours a week and contribute to the economy. Parents DON'T think like that!

I wanted a quality centre that would:

• Keep my daughter SAFE
• Care for her and love her as much as possible
• Provide a rich, diverse, creative, engaging learning and social environment where she would thrive
• Have a fantastic foundation, particularly in those first 1,000 days

These changes are concerning because they seem to be shifting the focus of ECE away from children's wellbeing and learning, to being a place to drop my daughter and just... hope for the best.