I've got my eye on you...

Although my colleague’s blog has presented some good points and ideas, the overall purpose of it fails in the aspects of the questions it fails to address.

First off, who pays for this regulation, the daycare facility? What if it is a home daycare and the facilitator takes care of family friends? At what number of students do you enforce the surveillance issue? You are expecting all daycare facilities, no matter the size of student attendance to pay for a high cost surveillance system that allows outside aces on a daily basis. Many parents already pay a high cost for daycare and this additional cost would then fall to them as well. This might push some who can’t afford it to use an unregulated facility, with no camera, where their child actually has a good chance of getting hurt.

 

Second, how is the video surveillance secure? Who monitors it? Unfortunately, in this day and age there are too many individuals who would LOVE to be able to access children playing at a daycare on a regular basis, and believe me, even if it is secure, pedophiles would still find a way around those boundaries. Just like hackers can still find their way around CIA firewalls.

Third, this blog also doesn’t address the “helicopter” parents the news speaks of and that are too involved in their child’s life. Is a parent watching allowed to call and make changes or suggestions to what they are seeing as a live feed? Many parents would almost undoubtedly call more than once a day about what they see, a child not sharing a toy, their child not getting enough of a snack, etc. and that would cause the employee to pay more attention to certain kids that others.

While surveillance is good idea on theory, it still does not take the place of an aware and active parent and a good, stable daycare facility. You can always ask other parents, read reviews online, and if there is 1 instance of uncomfortable “scratches”, change daycare facilities. There are enough out there.

One question you might ask of me after reading this is, am I a parent? The answer is, it doesn’t matter because this is an issue about regulation and control, not good parenting.