I have recently decided to stop taking my son to Jayne after he has attended her home for around 3 weeks as I start my new job and finish my 1 year maternity leave. Myself and my partner visited Jayne’s home a few months ago to meet her and see if she was the right fit for our 11 month old son. On the initial visit everything seemed great, Jayne has a beautiful immaculate home, she is very friendly and lovely. She also speaks her mind and is straight forward talking which we liked. Jayne explained she she is 64 and has done childminding for 20 years, our son seem to take to her and she seemed to be very loving and friendly towards him, she explained that the children go out every day to RHS Bridgwater or other places and when indoors they would do crafts in the kitchen and play. On the first week everything seemed fine yes my son cried but this is expected, I just seen it as a settling in period. However, in the following weeks I was noticing little things that I wasn’t too happy with. For instance, when I would drop my son off the bubbly happy smiles seen her do to him in the first meetings soon stopped as I was dropping him off in the morning, and then I also noticed that when I was dropping and picking him up the children were extremely quiet, Jayne has three babies ages 1-2 1/2 years including my son. On videos/uupdates she would send on WhatsApp I began to notice that there was never any fun background noise or music for the babies and it also seemed quite eerie. Last week when I dropped him off in the morning I greeted the other babies good morning and Jayne “sh’d” me and stated “we need to be quiet I keep telling these two (babies) aswell to be quiet, my son is upstairs in bed and he works nights.” This confused me as I was aware her son lived at home however she never told us he worked nights. I do not understand how you can be a childminder looking after babies and tell them to be quiet and make no noise, I found this concerning as my baby loves to be loud, he screams with excitement and likes to babble often. I then did not like how she “sh’d” the little girl for making a little excited scream and said “I’ve bloody told you today shhh”. This set alarm bells off for me as babies are to make noise and be loud this is how they learn and develop. I explained to Jayne that I didn’t like that she was asking the babies to be quiet and she then stated “my son has actually told me to stop worrying so much about him being in bed and to let the kids make noise.” This really concerned me and made me wonder what was the children even getting to do when they were with her. Additionally, Jayne seemed to complain about the foods I was providing for my son, aswell as me answering him when he was “whinging” even though he’s 11 months old, and that by doing so this is how they turn into “brats” by getting their own way. Another thing to mention, my son has been baby led weaned so therefore loves being independent with his meals. I made this very clear to Jayne on the first meeting on how he eats all home cooked food and loves to feed himself bananas, cucumber, peppers etc but also chews on them due to him teething. I also explained he likes to eat his own crumpets and blueberries and has done this from around 7-8months old (now 1). However, Jayne stated how the food I was providing him was too messy, and not proper food. So I then made meals which were suiting Jayne, however I was left feeling frustrated as not only was I having to change food to suit Jayne. I was feeling worried when I was opening his lunch box to see his blueberries hadn’t even been opened, his scrambled egg hadn’t even been microwaved (even though I told her on the morning both verbally and on text how he loves this), his bananas were only sometimes ate even though these are his favourite, and I began to question if Jayne was even fully bothering to atleast try him with the food as she just seemed to mention how much of a mess it made…even though that’s what babies do? I also had to buy different nappies as she didn’t like to use pull ups and I began to feel as though I was having to change my little routines and things that I do with my son to suit Jayne as she stated “you need to start feeding him with a spoon more so that it works out for me”. There was also a time last week when she stated her and the children would be staying indoors due to the rain, this was the same day the children had to stay quiet all day as her son was sleeping, I was under the impression the children would at least do some arts and crafts, but then it soon came to my attention that they were just stuck in the one room all day, which may I add isn’t massive so again this left me feel concerned as babies need to learn otherwise they get bored and restless. I felt that the babies were/are not stimulated enough. In all honesty, Jayne is a lovely friendly person but I believe she is very dated in her practice and set in her ways and I believe that the babies are held back from developing their personal and social skills, and Jayne gave me the impression that she is no longer in the job because she loves it but more so because she needs the money.

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