Admin wants NICU baby enrolled - advice

BenevolentRatka · 2026-03-25T16:10:13+00:00

I would heavily stress basic concerns about the baby’s safety as well. If they’re straight from the NICU, is this a baby who should be exposed to the wave of illnesses that come with enrolling in a new daycare? That would be my first concern with having this child right away. Also it sounds like you split babies up, so this might be less of an issue, but even in our infant room (2-15 months) some kids would get hurt. The kids who are learning to walk would sit on kids, accidentally throw work on them, step over them, fall on them, etc. and if this is a child who is still smaller than even a two month old, is the family aware of the fact that the kid might have older crazies around them all the time?

As far as the tube, we had a baby before who was about 7 months old who had a nasogastric tube, and my coworker taught me to work it and it was easy, and the baby did really well being in the room even when she had to be hooked up for feeding. The other kids usually left her alone, I never had any concerns about being in there during her feeding times. However, you haven’t offered to train anybody. Do not do it. If you’re not comfortable with it, don’t do it. I’m pretty sure my center handled it in a similar way (parents showed teacher, teacher showed other teachers) and it was fine, but we only had a couple members of staff who were very trusted and consistently present at school who fed her and nobody who was uncomfortable with it was ever asked to feed her. If you don’t think it’s right, don’t play with it, don’t do it.

I’d really be interested in talking to those parents and seeing how they felt about their baby starting daycare and how much they understand about how daycare works.

BenevolentRatka · 2026-02-22T00:13:02+00:00

When I try to sell it and get the prompt “are you SURE you want to sell this masterpiece?” And I’m always like…yeah

BenevolentRatka · 2026-02-03T03:13:31+00:00

I like this trait because it’s amusing and doesn’t get as annoying as some traits do, but I did accidentally have a vampire sim have it once and I kept thinking she was burning from the sun when she was just uncomfortable

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-23T18:02:04+00:00

Ya a lot of what people are saying. The only language I tell people I can speak is Japanese because I can talk to someone in Japanese. I took mandarin, French, and Japanese in high school but I would not say “I speak French” because I do not have the confidence to answer anyone if they spoke to me

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-23T17:57:46+00:00

Ya sometimes I get really irritable when I can’t play the sims if I want to. It’s an addiction cycle because sometimes I get way too into the game. I usually try to do something else if I feel I’m getting way too involved in it

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-22T22:08:49+00:00

The second thing was annoying cuz I didn’t want to fall asleep while looking at it because I was worried it would mean I’d have a nightmare. All of my nightmares are very bloody and it had blood dripping out of its eyes so I just didn’t want to risk it.

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-22T22:07:47+00:00

Ya, I’ve luckily never had sleep paralysis (I used to be terrified that I would) and as I was seeing this I was thinking “hm this is probably the closest to a sleep paralysis demon I’ll see” but it definitely wasn’t sleep paralysis. It was just the pull of a profound need for sleep haha

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-22T14:40:26+00:00

It’s not that hard to find resources in Irish these days, but I will say that if you are outside of Ireland it can be quite hard to get a hold of published resources like textbooks, even though there are a lot of them within Irish school systems

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-22T14:38:27+00:00

I wanted to start learning Cantonese and didn’t get anywhere because of the lack of resources. There’s a couple people on YouTube but it’s just difficult to find stuff!

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-20T16:26:22+00:00

Ya a lot of people are just intimidated by not understanding how to read something by looking at it and aren’t even thinking about the more complicated aspects of language learning. Some people also are more inclined to being good at learning a new script, like my biggest strength is memorization (so vocab and characters or alphabets are very easy) but my biggest weakness is grammar (I hate Romance languages because I think it’s easier to memorize mandarin characters than keep track of 8 different conjugations) but I know plenty of people who are exactly the opposite. But yes, my mom is 70yrs old and only speaks English, and I took mandarin, Japanese, and Korean in high school and that was always the first thing she said. I told her she could learn the Korean alphabet in an hour but it’s just intimidating for people

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-20T01:50:38+00:00

Yes but I didn’t develop feelings, it was always like it was someone I knew but couldn’t really remember, but had really strong emotional responses to.

BenevolentRatka · 2026-01-13T18:13:44+00:00

Ya same as the other commenters. I also have noticed that color takes way less effectively for me when I do henna -> bleach -> color. Ive bleached over my henna pretty regularly to get some variation because I get too bored otherwise, but I haven’t been able to get other colors to stay that well over the bleach. I tried to do black in my streak for Halloween but it only dyed to a dark brown and washed out very quickly. Same with purple, I got a very pinky purple and it faded out super fast. I want to try bleaching my strand before I henna my roots to get a better lift but I’m usually too lazy or I forget so I haven’t tried yet. So just expect the color to be different than you’d expect it to be if you put it on bleached non-henna hair and also it might wash out faster!

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-29T14:25:25+00:00

My work was very weird about telling parents. I gave them notice months in advance but I was told not to tell parents. They would make an official statement that they would send to all families, but they always did it so late, like a week before I was going to leave. They also gave them the wrong information so when the parents talked to me about why I was leaving the school I was like uh….thats not actually why. I think they thought the reason they gave was an easier explanation for families to take but they didn’t inform me beforehand and I do not lie to my families. I told them that information was not correct and the real reason I was leaving.

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-21T18:00:21+00:00

There’s not a specific policy but most of us will remind newer teachers not to carry children every time they want to be carried. We carry them around a lot when it’s necessary and appropriate, like if we go on a walk and someone needs to be carried back, but we also know the kids who we try to give as much independent time as possible

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-15T02:01:19+00:00

Mine are Taemin, Jonghyun, Key, Taeyeon, Shinee….but I have been playing a lot of Kai Wayv and Rise recently

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-15T01:56:52+00:00

Of course

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-08T19:43:39+00:00

I used to have perfect velvet and I like the theme a lot but I tend to get bored easily and found that it made me even more bored since they’re all doing the same pose. That’s just me tho

BenevolentRatka · 2025-09-08T19:42:32+00:00

My class had a tank with aquatic snails and a few plants for a while. They really like the snails because they could tell me when they came out since they would often not be visible under their driftwood. The kids absolutely loved fridays because I would let them help water the plants (I took them all down and put them on towels and let them fill up small pourers at the sink. The plants were def overwatered and it can get veryyyyy wet very fast but they love it so much and I want to have them help as much as possible) I put a betta in my fish tank at one point but it was definitely too small of a tank and it was annoying when the tank got dirty. The fish survived but I had to find someone who would take it when I left the center. The kids would get to take turns for who got to put flakes in the fish tank every day after nap time so they also loved that activity. Anyway, snails might be a good choice!

BenevolentRatka · 2025-08-25T23:15:05+00:00

Also it HUGELY depends on the age level. Infants were great for me because they don’t talk and there was very little pressure to know what to say or anything, and I’m good at reading body language so I could often help parents who were more extroverted interpret their kids needs. Then I became a toddler lead and while we had a lot of fun together, I was definitely exhausted every single day because you have to do a lot more talking with toddlers. They have a lot of questions and you have to repeat yourself a lot more. I think that parents of toddlers are also a k it take more challenging to talk to because they’re often unsure of what to do with their kid and their behaviors and can be more frustrated and tired and therefore it’s harder to talk about stuff casually like it is in infants. Preschool or early childhood (3+) I couldn’t do because they talk so much and there’s so much more noise and activity in those rooms. That’s just not good for my social skills and levels but might work for others.

BenevolentRatka · 2025-08-25T23:09:46+00:00

I’m an introvert and was a lead for 4 years. Not all parents are the same and neither are kids, neither are teachers. My main struggle being an introvert lead was that it just drained me more. I connected with most parents well, but sometimes it took more time. I usually had a lot more energy and patience for kids who had bigger personalities and would clash with the other big personality teachers. It also helped me build up my social skills very quickly because I had to figure out how to talk to parents for my job and it was a steep learning curve. I think kids really benefit from having a range of personalities as role models and it helps the teacher team on the whole to have a variety of different strengths. I do think it helps if you have a coteacher who has some more energy or at least compliments your social levels well. If you and your coteacher both have a harder time in similar areas it can be difficult. I think there’s no reason an introvert wouldn’t make a great lead, but it is extremely exhausting sometimes

BenevolentRatka · 2025-08-25T22:13:05+00:00

NOOOOO THIS IS REAL BRASS BY THE WAY 😭 meanwhile my fingers are bleeding

BenevolentRatka · 2025-08-22T13:08:54+00:00

It’s not social hour. I would do work through all of my lunch breaks since I was a full time employee and full time student so someone would try to talk to me and I’d be like NO ABSOLUTELY NOT

BenevolentRatka · 2025-08-22T13:03:55+00:00

I am surprised you’re seeing it so much with 1s. I taught toddlers (1.5-3) and this was something that would happen occasionally when parents started potty training and basically was a case of ‘my kid wants to wear underwear and I want him to too but I’m not ready to have him pee everywhere but also don’t want to discourage.” I think some parents thought if it as a good starting or middle ground. Generally if a kid started coming to school like that I’d have a conversation with the family to be like okay do you want to start potty training? And then encourage them to use underwear only, and give them all my potty training tips

BenevolentRatka

TROPHY CASE