Six children through the day is the state limit for one provider, and it is why I love this career. With six, I can give one child the extra ten minutes they need without the other five losing anything. You would need a very different building to run that schedule with twenty children.
My license actually covers nine: those six, plus up to three more who are enrolled in school full time. The three come after school, on snow days, and through the school vacations, and they are usually brothers and sisters of the little ones here, or children who were with me years ago and still come back when their school is closed. Six is the number that shapes the day.
What family child care is
A licensed category of its own. New Hampshire licenses family child care homes separately from centers, and separately again from a sitter in your own house.
Most people know the two ends of the spectrum: a center with classrooms and staff who change every September, or a sitter who comes to yours. Family child care sits between them, and it is the part almost nobody explains, so I have written it out in full, including where it is the wrong choice.
The State of New Hampshire licenses this program, visits it unannounced, and requires the fire and health inspections, the background and fingerprint screening, and the twenty-one hours of training a year that are listed on my About page. What it does not have is a rotating staff, a waiting list of sixty, or a child who becomes a name on a roster.
Two things follow from that, and they are the reason families choose this over a center. The first is continuity: your child has the same teacher for five years, and that teacher watched them learn to walk. The second is the mix of ages. Six children spanning six weeks to twelve years is the point. The little ones copy the big ones, and the big ones learn to be gentle. You cannot buy that in a room full of children born the same year.
Parties and traditions
Every birthday gets celebrated, and the year has its landmarks.
- Birthday parties
- Halloween dress-up and party
- Christmas party
- Easter egg hunt
- Valentine’s Day party
- St. Patrick’s Day, when the Leprechaun comes
- School portraits
How I teach a two-year-old to be a person
You will see “Pyramid Model” on my licensing paperwork and on a lot of day care websites. Most of them do not explain it. Here is what it is, and what it looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
What it covers. The Pyramid Model is a framework for the social and emotional side of growing up: sharing, waiting, calming down, saying sorry and meaning it. Letters and counting carry on alongside it. Think of it as the plan for the hard parts of being little.
- A few children, with a planRare. A written plan, worked out together with the family.
- Some children, for a whileExtra practice on one specific skill, until it sticks.
- Every child, every dayWarm, predictable relationships and a room set up to prevent trouble.
- Me, and my trainingNone of the rest works if the adult is not steady. That is the base.
It starts with the grown-up, not the child
The bottom of the pyramid is widest because it carries everything else. It means I keep up my training every year, I know what is typical at each age, and I do not take a two-year-old’s meltdown personally. (The CDC publishes the plainest list of what most children do by a given age, if you would like to look at it yourself.) A calm adult is a skill, and it is the one I work on hardest.
Twenty-one hours of training every year, first aid and child and adult CPR, and thirty years of watching children go through the exact stage yours is in right now. When your child throws the blocks, I am not surprised or offended. I know what comes next.
Warm relationships, and a day set up so trouble does not start
This is where nearly all of the work happens, and when it is done well most children never need anything else. Two halves: I build a real relationship with each child, and I arrange the day so the predictable flashpoints do not occur.
A lot of what gets called a behavior problem is a design problem. Two children, one favorite toy and no plan is a setup issue, and I treat it as one.
Snack comes at the same time every day, so nobody melts down from a hunger they cannot name yet. Every child gets a turn choosing the book before nap, which means the child who cannot wait gets to practice waiting on a schedule they can predict. And on the rail trail they can walk without holding my hand, so the child who needs to move gets to move.
Teaching the missing skill on purpose, the way you would teach a letter
Sometimes a child needs more than a good environment. The insight of this level is simple, and it changes everything: a child who cannot share has not learned to share yet. That is a skill gap, not a character flaw, and you close a skill gap by teaching it, deliberately and repeatedly, while everyone is still calm.
A two-year-old who grabs is not punished for grabbing. We practice taking turns at a calm moment, when nobody is upset, as often as it takes. And I put names on feelings out loud all day. “You are frustrated, that tower keeps falling.” A child who has a word for it is far less likely to need to bite about it.
An individual plan, worked out together
Occasionally a behavior keeps happening even with everything above in place. The model’s answer is to work out what the behavior is getting the child (attention, escape, a sensory need) and to plan a better way for them to get the same thing.
I build this level together with the family, and I try it early, while a pattern is still small.
The same approach as they grow
The framework does not change. What changes is what your child is capable of.
- 6 weeks – 1 year
- Everything is relationship. Your baby is learning one thing: when I signal, someone comes. That is the foundation of self-control later on.
- 1 – 2 years
- Big feelings, almost no words for them. This is the grabbing age, and it is normal. We start putting names on feelings before they can use them.
- 2 – 3 years
- Turn-taking becomes possible, then reliable. We rehearse it when everyone is calm, so the skill exists before it is needed.
- 3 – 4 years
- Friendship skills, and the beginning of solving it themselves. They can suggest a fix instead of only reporting a problem.
- 4 – 5 years
- Real apologies, and the beginning of calming themselves down. This is what kindergarten asks for.
Potty training, at their pace
This is the one parents apologize for asking about, and it is one of the most useful things I do.
I follow the child rather than the date. One of mine was ready at sixteen months when nobody else was, and I have had children who were not ready until well past three. Both are normal. Pushing a child who is not ready sets the whole thing back by months, so I do not do it.
What makes it work here is that it happens all day, every day, with the same person, alongside other children doing the same thing. We agree the approach with you before we start, so the words and the routine are identical at home and here. That consistency is most of the work, and it is the part that is hard to get from a center.
Alongside the letters and counting
The social side is half of it. The rest is the ordinary business of getting ready for school, and it happens in the same room on the same day.
The basics
Colors, shapes, songs, recognizing the alphabet, and counting, all of it worked into play.
Making things
Arts and crafts most days. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas presents go home with them, and a Home Depot Kids Workshop kit every month.
Music, every Wednesday
An outside musician comes in with a guitar or a keyboard: new songs, seasonal songs, and movement songs to get the wiggles out.
Screens
Sparingly, and never instead of playing. There is no television on in the background here.
Three exceptions, all of them occasions rather than habits. On a birthday, that child picks a program to watch with a special lunch. From November there is Fun Friday, PJ Day, with something seasonal alongside lunch. And when the weather will not let us outside we put on Danny Go, which is less watching than dancing.
What this changes for you
Small things stay small
Because the work starts at level one and only moves up when it needs to, patterns get noticed while they are still ordinary.
You hear it from me first
Anything at level two or three is worked out with you, not reported to you after the fact.
The words come home
Most families end up using the same phrases at home. Children do far better when the rules sound the same in both houses.
The Pyramid Model was developed by federally funded research centers now organized as the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations. New Hampshire has been a Pyramid Model state since 2017.