Health Focused and Village-Centered Community Childcare
Daycares are still toxic to children!
Children are suffering from problems never before imagined. From ADHD to Zika, not to mention diseases formerly rarely even seen. Somehow Autism went from 1 in 10,000 when our parents were kids (the baby boomers) to 1 in 59 children today. (The below image is from the CDC).
Something is happening and no one is sure what it is the cause exactly. The finger is being pointed at everything from vaccines to GMOs. Until the stats can tell us what the cause of these shocking realities are; we as parents need to be extra careful.
Yet, even the most careful parent will send their kid to a daycare that’s toxic. Why would they do this? And first off, why the heck are there any toxic daycares at all?
Why are there Toxic Daycares
Daycares are licensed by most states, parents assume that because they are licensed they are safe. No. It simply means that they are legally required to use only legally allowed chemicals. What are legally allowed chemicals? Basically anything not made of opium or plutonium. This can be the hormone disrupting fragrance chemical, and a whole slew of carcinogenic substances like vaporized household bleach directly into the lungs of children. (Seriously, this is common)
Daycares do not have a legal responsibility to act within the best interests of children. We write about this a lot, it’s called a fiduciary duty. When educators are deficient in this basic duty of raising a child, their priorities get confused and children suffer needlessly. Some rare daycares wisely give themselves this legal duty via contract law. Look in the contract with your daycare if there is a single line (let alone whole section) how they take responsibility for your child.
Daycares sometimes just don’t know. It’s not a subject taught in early childhood education classes. They assume it’s safe because everyone else assumes it’s safe. There now exists organizations that educate and certify daycare workers and their facilities. No longer can this be an excuse.
How to tell if your daycare is toxic to your child
When you walk in, what do you smell? If you smell anything other than great food, it’s probably a toxic daycare. Do you smell cleaning materials? Do you smell “fragrances?” Run away! It must smell like “home”, or coffee (At our founding school we brew coffee for the parents on Monday mornings).
You see (or smell) diffusers or spray canisters:The jury is still out on the toxicity of fragrance chemicals, but the consensus is in: Too much is bad. With the chemical in almost every child-product (What’s with children marketed as stinky?) the concentration of it in daycares skyrockets well above what’s considered safe. So, whether you believe the fragrance chemical dangers are reality or hype, you can agree, in a daycare, it’s not the place for it.
Anti-Bacterial hand soap: The FDA realized that super strains of bacteria were killing thousands of people a year and were created by the over-use of antibiotics. They quickly moved to do something about it by banning production of soap with antibiotics in it. It’s a no brainer: Why would anyone use soap with drugs in them on kids? Anti-bacterial chemical soaps are still sold by stores, and daycares still buy it despite this warning.
There are no weeds or bugs in the outside play area. If opportunistic plants and animals cannot even survive, how can we expect children to thrive? Allergies were rare for our parents, the baby boomers, but now life is different. Until we know why, pulling weeds and mulching is a wonderful practice done for millennia. We’re so particular with outside areas, we even ask parents not to idle their cars in the driveway.
Plastic toys are everywhere: Plastics are inevitable, even in some of the most strict Montessori programs. Some may be okay. But if everything is plastic, hold your breath and walk out!
Water filtration: Not everyone filters their water and is okay with the tap water. But if you do filter your water at home, wouldn’t you want your child drinking clean water too? Everyone overlooks what kind of water children are offered, this matters to us, so we included it into this list.
Screen time: We feel like a toxic environment can also manifest in what kid’s brains are fed, if they are given screen time, watch out, it’s a common tactic used for the daycare worker’s benefit, not the child’s.
They use chlorine bleach to sanitize: Chlorine bleach, also called Sodium Hypochlorite, prevents a variety of disease from spreading to humans. In daycares, sanitation is serious business, because kids get sick, and so do daycare workers. We know! (We also haven’t ever closed our location due to us being sick) However there are many serious problems with chlorine bleach specific to daycares. It may be okay for at home, but in a daycare setting it is not acceptable.
Chlorine gas in bleach is heavier than air. If you can smell even the slightest amount of bleach, those who live near the ground (children & babies) are breathing it in. Imagine breathing it in, all day long, as it is used to clean everything, every day!
Bleach is put in spray bottles to sanitize diaper changing tables. The child is changed, cleaned, and immediately the daycare worker takes the child off the table (puts them on the ground) and by law sanitizes the area by spraying the diaper area. Vaporized bleach then sinks down and children breathe it in.
Bleach an ammonia chemically react and kill adults and children every year. Not only is there an inherent danger of that, but a byproduct of urine is ammonia, which is then cleaned with bleach all day long!
It also produces drug resistant super-strains of bacteria as discussed above. No reason to use bleach with better options out there!
Some of our standards
We can’t control what happens at your home, but we can control what happens here. Our environment is strictly non-toxic. We get 3rd party certification through Eco-Healthy Childcare and much more including onsite manufacturing of non-toxic sanitizers.
Nature > chemicals
As part of fiduciary duty to your child our facilities are strictly non-toxic. For hand soap, and general-purpose cleaning soap we use organic home-made castile soap made from food-grade coconut and olive oil. We may add in certain essential oils to deter bugs, like houseflies, from revisiting formerly “delicious” objections.
Keeping kids safe also means sanitation, we use Hypochlorous Acid (HCL) which is a non-toxic substance the body’s white blood cells produce to kill viruses and bacteria. It can be manufactured outside the body and has a perfect affinity with our cells, however once manufactured it has a shelf life of 2 weeks. The toxic version of this has a longer shelf-life and is called sodium Hypochlorite (also known as Bleach), we do not use this. Every week we freshly manufacture our own HCL from vinegar, water, and salt using an in-house electrolysis machine. HCL is more effective than bleach, is non-toxic, and FDA approved. Some healthcare providers even use it to disinfect cuts and scrapes.
In the spirit of a non-toxic environment, our facilities are Eco-healthy Childcare 3rd party Certified, which means a third party certifies that we have no toxic toys, furniture, or products. Even outside the house against weeds and bugs we’re 100% non-toxic.
