The truth about running a nursery from home

But back to the point of the video.

In this video we will be going over some of the cons of working in a nursery.

In the previous video I went through some of the positives which included being your own boss the ability to look after your own children and be there for your family.

But now we will go through some of the negatives which includes.

Number 1 – You are everything

You’re the cleaner, you’re the cook, you’re the nurse, you’re a nursery practitioner,  you’re the secretary, you’re the cook, you end up being counsellors for both staff and parents, any problem big or small people will come to you.

You have so many hats and so much responsibility.

Having to fulfil and take on all these roles can be overwhelming.  It’s not like in a dedicated nursery building where it is much easier to separate these role.  Because you are living in the house you are likely at some point to have to fulfil all these roles.

And people will come to you much more to resolve all types of issues.

People will lean on you and come to you for everything.

For example, even if you hire a cook, if they call in sick, people will look to you to replace them.

I was always be disturbed on lunch breaks as people felt I would know everything.  Even minor things like asking me where a child’s hat might be.  Because you are still in the house it’s much easier for people to contact you.

If someone needs something ultimately it’s your responsibility and you gotta do it.  If a parent needs a receipt it’s on your head.  Staff need a reference for their house, you gotta do it

There is so much that you have to take care of as a home nursery provider.

You may feel a little overwhelmed because you have so many things that you have to do.

This is what caused me stress early on, until I came up with a proper system to manage it.

By properly delegating and giving specific responsibilities.  When problems arose I let people know that they had to solve it and not rely on me to do so.

Once you get more into to the routine of things and are more settled things will be easier.

But I’m just letting you know that it can still be a little overwhelming especially in the beginning when you are just starting out.

Even though I’ve been doing it for 7 years, I still find it overwhelming sometimes.  Having all the responsibility ultimately fall on me.  Which is something you will have to deal with and get used to.

One way to help as I mention is to really define your other staff’s roles and to ensure that you delegate.  This is something I struggled with.  As I took on most roles as I found it hard to trust others to do it how I wanted.  But I realised through experience that by collaborating you get better ideas.  And it is good to empower others to take charge too as it will help develop them.  And lead to less stress for yourself.

Another negative of running a nursery from your home is

People may be less professional 

Unfortunately, parents may take you less seriously than in a dedicated centre.

When it comes to running a nursery outside your home in a dedicated building for example.  Which for ease from now I will refer to as childcare on non-domestic premises.   They have set times and hours.  They open at a certain time and close at certain time.

And the majority of parents stick to it.  You are less likely to get parents trying to bend these timings and understand that staff want to go home and parents are less likely to arrive early expecting staff to be in.

We used to open at 6am previously to help parents who started early.  Yet we still had parents trying to come earlier banging on the door wanting their child to be let in.  A few times a parent came at 5am, and because they knew we were at home kind of demanded that we opened.

This wouldn’t happen if you were in your own building, because they wouldn’t expect you to be in.

I felt rude not opening the door when a parent arrived early, as I didn’t want them to be waiting outside.  Especially if I was inside.  So I would just let them in.

But in reality it was a lack of respect from the parent.  They may not respect that you need time to get ready and may want to rest before starting which is an already long day.

What I’m saying is that, parents may have less respect for you than if you were running a CONDP.

The same thing can happen at pick-up.  Parents can leisurely stroll in long after you’ve closed and think that it’s okay.  You may even get comments like it’s ok as you’re at your home already.  and may start to take advantage of this situation.

We weren’t as strict on this at the start as we wanted to be friendly and nice.  But we had to put a stop to it, as it was effecting are enjoyment of work.  And it was just very frustrating.

Once we spoke to parents to specifically state our boundaries, this happened less.

Which is something you will have to do to.

You need to let them know your rules and let them know you will be sticking to them.

Parents still tried to come early and pick up late after we had these conversations, but soon stopped once they knew they would have to wait outside until we opened even though we was in the house.  And late pick-ups were less when we starting charging for this.

It still happened and we never really charged people where it was a genuine lateness like an accident or some personal circumstance.  But the parents you know who are just taking the mick will soon hopefully stop when they know they will be charged for the lateness.

Unfortunately, family and friends may take you less seriously too.  Not respecting that you are running your own business and may do stuff which you may not want to happen in your nursery.  Like not tidying or visiting the house unannounced.  Or expecting you to do things because your just at home.

This can be a little frustrating if you don’t feel supported as you try to manage the pressures of running a nursery.

There is also the potential for staff to be less professional too, but as long as you set your standard and what you expect early and show you are serious about it you can prevent this.

Another of the main negatives is that it can be difficult to separate your home and work life.

Difficult to separate home and work

With the nursery being in your home, it can feel like your always at work.

You end up being in what used to be your home and constantly seeing toys.  This can be stressful and make it really difficult to feel relaxed at home.

When you’re constantly surrounded by your work it can become addictive to making things perfect.  You may end up constantly adding to that activity you set-up to make it just that bit better or thinking more about the 3 I’s of an activity.

It’s hard to shut off from work.

Some days you may just get sick of loads of toys and nursery stuff in your house, in your kitchen, in your bathroom and all over your house.   

This isn’t something I was really bothered about as I didn’t mind the nursery stuff in my house and I saw it as an opportunity to do extra stuff if I wasn’t doing anything else in the evenings.  But it can be difficult to find a balance.

I have spoke to other home childcare providers and I do know some who have reduced the stuff they have in their kitchen and bathroom like displays so that it doesn’t feel as much like a nursery.

This also might not be a concern for you but could end up being a concern for your family members too who may be staying in the house, as their home will feel like a workplace too.

When you start off your going to be very excited and want to cover your whole house with nursery stuff, but it might be good to do it little by little if this might be a concern for you.  As you or your family might find it overwhelming and could make it difficult to separate your home and work.

I touched on it already, but having a nursery in your home can make it impossible to really separate your home and work life and you end up constantly doing work without really having a break.

You end up carrying work well into your evenings and doing work when your supposed to at home.

This could be initiated by parents, who turn up late forcing you to work later than you intended.  Whenever, parents were late I would always be the one to stay later so that all my staff didn’t have to stay later as it was in my home and it obviously didn’t affect me as much if they had to stay late and then still travel home.

Parents may even ask and pay to stay late which can give you extra income if you needed and didn’t have anything planned in the evening.  But this can mean you overwork yourselves so be weary of this.

Even if you don’t intend to do work in the evenings your work life balance can be blurred in other ways.

I said in the last video, the ability to have my work breaks at home was such a blessing as you get to relax in your home.  You have all your home comforts and can even sleep in your bed.

But in reality it can be more difficult than this.

Unless and until you set clear boundaries with your staff, which can be difficult to do.  You may be constantly disturbed on your breaks.  With staff asking various questions that in reality could have waited until you return.

The inability to really take a break from work for yourself can be stressful.

Some people I’ve spoken to have also mentioned that they have found it difficult to balance the needs of their families and the needs of their work.

When your family are at home, whilst your working, they may feel that they should get some of your time and not understand why they can’t spend time with their parent or even partner.

Your children may even get jealous of the time you spend working with and caring for other children. Hopefully you can have conversations with them to help them with this transition, but even then they may still be upset by it.

Which can be upsetting for you too.

Both my children were like this when they started the nursery.  My youngest was under one when he started and used to cry and have a tantrum whenever I used hold or care for another child.

Though, they both quickly got used to this.

Another frustration is that family members may now believe things are your responsibility now as your ‘just at home’ and expect you to do things, not respecting how much time you and work you put in during the day.

If you do have a family it can feel like you never get a break from kids.  Sometimes you may just want to have a break but having the nursery at home makes it very difficult to check out.  As, as soon as you stop working at home your straight at home.

It can be long talking to children all day and having to give that same energy when your at home.  But I suppose if you already work in a nursery, you are already used to this challenge.

Linked into difficulty balancing your home and work life is the fact that you end up working some very long hours.

You may end up working very long hours

When it’s your business especially at the start you are very excited and end up wanting to do everything in relation to improving the nursery and not wanting to stop.

When you have momentum, you don’t want to lose it and can easily end up working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, pushing to ensure the nursery is how you want.  Which can lead to burnout.

When I first started the nursery I used to work in the actual nursery 6am until 6.30pm and would still do work after I finished to try and promote nursery places and do things like creating and managing the website.

This was easier as I was single and didn’t have any children so I was able to just fully focus on getting the nursery started.

The long hours did continue after I had children, until I realised the importance of making sure that I make time for my family and prioritising them over work.

This can be very difficult to do.  Especially when you are really passionate about the nursery it can be easy to forget to take time for your family.

It’s so easy when working for yourself to overdo it and work too much

Depending on the hours you open, your nursery will be open for a long time in your house.

As, if you want to attract the maximum amount of parents you will likely have to open from at least 8am to 6pm.  This is so that you can allow parents to drop off and collect around their work.

As it’s your business you can open any hours you want but these are the minimum hours you will likely expect to work if you want to operate as a standard day nursery.

This works out at 10 hours per day.  Though, we operate from 7.30 to 6.30pm and used to do 6am until 6.30pm which was 12 and half hours a day.

Now, as you will be a codp and not a childminding setting you do have other staff so you won’t have to be there all the time. On-call

But even though you don’t have to be there physically you end up having to be on call during these times, ready to be there potentially if something goes wrong.

It’s funny even as I was preparing for this video I had to stop in order to cover in the nursery to ensure we were still in ratio as a few people were off sick, and it’s not even in my home anymore.

This doesn’t happen very often anymore but this used to make me feel extremely anxious whenever I wasn’t at the nursery as I felt at any second I could and would be called back to the nursery in order to sort something out.

So even if you aren’t physically working all those hours it can feel like you can’t really relax when you aren’t there.  Which just adds to the stress.

As the owner you end up doing lots of stuff outside of the working day too.

Outside of working with the children you’ll be doing lots of other tasks like going shopping for the nursery, promoting the nursery by for example handing out flyers, doing paperwork, responding to and answering enquiries.

You may need to answer phone calls or respond to texts from parents or potential parents. It’s good to reply to potential parents quick in order to increase the likelihood of them responding.

Though this isn’t essential to reply.

It’s a good idea to get a separate work phone to your personal phone as well, so that you can take a break from being contacted.

I made the mistake of giving some parents my personal number and even though I told them not to message me unless its important.  They would still message me outside of work hours for very minor things that they shouldn’t have been distracting me when I’m not at work.

It so important to actually get some time away from the nursery and so important to organise your time so that you do actually get breaks, otherwise it can be very overwhelming.

You need to be self-motivated

I know another big stress that people I work with struggle with is self-motivation.

This is one of the main reasons it takes people much longer for people to actually start and open their nursery.

When you’re running your own nursery.  You are your own boss and there is no one there to tell you what to do.

Despite there being 1000s of things you can be overwhelmed not knowing where to start or what tasks to complete at a certain time.

When you work for someone, they create the structure and the routine and essentially lay out tasks for you to complete by a set deadline.

When you work for yourself there is no real deadline, you create it yourself.

There are no set tasks, you set these too.

You have to come up with what you have to and want to do.

Not everyone is capable of doing this and can lead to apathy.

Where there is no or little accountability it can be hard to motivate yourself to get things done and get things done quickly.

Not everyone has the same energy and passion to continuously get up and keep going especially on days which are harder and things aren’t going as well.

You have to be really self-motivated.

If you do struggle with self-motivation, you need to get support wherever you can.

Speak to people and let them know what you are doing.  Get in contact with others who may be doing the same thing

I do help to support those enrolled on the course to help them stay motivated.

There is the facebook group which with a community supporting you all should also help keep you motivated.

If you haven’t joined already, then you can find the link to the Facebook group in the description

I also try to keep in contact with those that are enrolled to check in and support them.

But it can be difficult if you are doing this on your own.

Especially if you’re not the most organised person or aren’t sure of what you should be doing.  It can be very difficult.

There will be days when your not motivated but you still have to get the job done, you still have to get your team going, show positive energy to the children and still be friendly with parents.

There’s no let off, as there are so many people relying on you and this can be difficult.

There will be periods when running your own nursery where you just get burnt out.  This can happen in all fields.

You get days where you just can’t be bothered.  Days where you just don’t feel like working.

Which isn’t to say you don’t love your job and you don’t love doing what you do or that you don’t feel blessed to be in a position to work for yourself.

But there will be periods when you just want to do nothing.

Periods where you would prefer to meander through the day and just complete tasks that someone else has set for you.

But when you run your own nursery you can’t as it has a greater impact on you and your nursery.  It becomes harder to do less as you know there are people relying on you to get tasks done.  You have children, staff and parents who all rely on you.  And it can be difficult when you are the one who is going to pick yourself up, there’s no one above you to give you that push, you don’t have a boss that will be there to help motivate you.

It’s a big sacrifice and a lot of times it goes underappreciated, which can lead to further demotivation.  Which can create a vicious cycle leading to loneliness and potentially depression.  Which leads on to the next negative which is the isolation.

Though, if you develop really good relationships with parents and staff they can help you whenever you do feel like this.

It will be important to have a good circle around you to help boost you in these moments.  So your family will be key and I hope the Facebook group and myself can support you too.

Isolation

As I mentioned another negative of running a nursery from home is that it can feel isolating.

Yes, you are working with other staff, unlike in being a nanny or being a lone childminder.

But even though, you do have staff and can develop friendships with parents.  It can be difficult to develop real friendships as the relationships you build are blurred.

Any friendships you build with parents can be complicated as you have to be professional and your main concern should be for the children.

Having friendships with parents may be confusing for the child and may make it harder for you to effectively safeguard the children.

For example, you may be reluctant to for example to address a safeguarding concern or to address SEN needs.  As the conversation with the parent may be more difficult if you are friends.

Naturally, we will all intend to put the child first and it’s easy to say that we all will. But we are all human and you may be tempted to overlook things if you have a real close relationship with a parent.

Even in more minor situations like the child being sick, you may find it harder to send them home.

Also, not in relation to the child.  In terms of payment, they may start to pay late or take advantage of the relationship. It can be awkward to repeatedly ask for payment from a parent you regard as a friend.

Because of the business relationship and your need to make a living this can make it difficult to make any real relationships at work.

Though, I have made some good friends from parents, and it has actually made some of the conversations that I have had to had easier as I know I can tell them anything.

So, it really depends on the individuals.  But even with this, the relationships developed better once their child had left the nursery.  Most of our conversations focused on the child before this.

Also, a lot of friendships that we will make in our lifetime is through our workplace, as we spend most of the time there.

You do work with people and you can build relationships with staff, though as you are the owner it can be more difficult to.

Again, this is because of the importance to remain professional.  It may become difficult to reprimand staff if you have been too friendly with them.

There’s a clear power dynamic there which makes it difficult to create a friendship where you see each as level outside of work.  Not impossible but can be more difficult.

Also, they will naturally see you as their boss, so they may find it more difficult to actually see you as a friend rather than an authority figure. This makes it difficult to build real bonds..

I know one manager who was running CONDP who got very upset as she felt she had a really good relationship with their staff but they arranged a staff meal and didn’t invite her.  Which although was upsetting can be expected as they will see you as more of an authority figure and may find it harder to ‘let their hair down’ in your presence.

If this does happen to you and you do start to feel isolated, it’s important to join with other people in your community.

Our council runs lots of training for managers which is a good opportunity to mix with others in a similar situations.

As mentioned in the previous video, with regards to the positives of running nursery from home.  It is easier for you to balance your work life and personal life so do make sure that you take opportunities to do things outside of work, start a new class or join different groups in your area.

It will really help your mental health and help you to feel less isolated

Though as I said in that video, you do not need to stay in doors all the time which can add to the feeling of isolation. We always used to take the kids on various trips, taking them out on nature walks and other things.  Spending time outside can really help combat the feeling of isolation.

It’s not easy

Another negative, of running a nursery from home, is that it’s not easy.

Many people think of childcare, especially when it’s at home as just playing with children.

Though, there is a lot more to it.  There is a lot of extra work to do, training that is needed.

It is a very tough job and a very undervalued field.

You will end up working with some very challenging behaviour which can be very stressful.

It feels like especially after the pandemic, children seem to have understandably come back with a lot more complex and unique behaviours and needs.

I’ve felt this at my nursery, I feel like there has been a lot more communication and social delays since returning to full capacity.

Which is challenging.

And managing this and supporting children is a huge responsibility and can be very difficult

But even without the pandemic, all children have such huge emotions no matter the age range.  And trying to ride this emotional roller-coaster of these little ones that can change from day to day or even second to second can be very draining.

It’s hard enough being a parent and dealing with your own children’s range of emotions.  So going from that to large groups of children can be a new experience.

Children trust you as they trust there parents too so will trust you with their real emotions and will feel comfortable to show you exactly how they are feeling good and bad.

When you have a group of children together you naturally get conflicts and disagreements and you have to help them to manage conflict which brings its own stress too.

Also, even though there has been an emphasis from Ofsted to reduce paperwork in early years, so that staff can spend more time with children.  This doesn’t really effect managers and owners as the amount of paperwork you will need to do will be largely the same.

There is still a lot to do outside of caring for the children.  There’s still group tracking that needs to be done, self-improvement documents, and things like observations on SEN children and the paperwork needed for them haven’t really changed.

So, it is still a lot of work to be done.  Which can be difficult to fit in the typical working day.

Though, although the work isn’t easy it is very rewarding, in terms of getting to make a difference in the children’s lives which is the best parts of the job.

If you haven’t worked in childcare before I would strongly suggest getting some experience in the field.  Even if you just ask to volunteer in a local nursery.

I never did this, but I wish I did.

It will give you vital knowledge which can help you to build your nursery as well as give you an insight into the challenges involved.

I also feel personally, that it is important that any owner has at one point done every role within their business so that they really know the challenges their staff have.

Handle uncomfortable situations

But moving onto the next negative.  Which is that you have to handle a lot uncomfortable situations.

Ultimately, the buck stops with you.

You are in charge.

This means that if anything goes wrong and is not resolved it will end up at your door and you will have to deal with it.

Which can be difficult, especially if you’re particularly fearful of conflicts.

Some examples of some uncomfortable situations you have to handle as nursery owner.

Are one, if parents aren’t paying you have to handle that and it can be frustrating having to ask parents constantly to be paid for the service you offer. Especially if they are avoiding paying.  You don’t want to be rude and you want to help and want to believe that they tried to pay but it must not have gone through.

But most of the time it’s not true.  And you have to put your foot down.  Which can be nerve racking and challenging.

Two things that a childminder wanted me to add regarding uncomfortable situations to include in this video is that you will have to deal with challenging behaviour which I mentioned previously.  This becomes even tougher if parents and the nursery aren’t working together to manage behaviour especially if there are different rules at home to your nursery.

Speaking to parents about their children’s behaviour can be difficult.

The other uncomfortable situation that the childminder wanted to add is parents trying not to follow your policies and procedures in your handbook and then getting mad when you show them the rules.

This happens a lot with sickness policies.  Parents may try to bring in their child when they are visibly sick.

If you work in a nursery you may be used to these situations, but if you don’t you may find it difficult to have these conversations with parents, especially if they are adamant that their child is well enough to be at nursery.  But you need to make sure that you address this, as you don’t want sickness to spread to other children and you don’t want it to spread it to your children.  When there is a disagreement it can lead to them leaving the nursery, and leaving disgruntled seeking revenge and giving you a bad review or making a malicious complaint to Ofsted.  These are some of the things this childminder has dealt with regularly and potentially be something you will have to deal with too.

One of the best things about opening a nursery is that, you get to create jobs.  You get to start someone’s career or provide opportunities for them to continue their career. Which is an amazing feeling.

Though, managing staff can be difficult.  It can be difficult and uncomfortable to pull staff up if they are not working to the standard you expect and may be even more difficult to let staff go if things are not working out.

If it comes to your responsibility there’s no one you can pass this onto.  It’s something you have to deal with.

Another thing that can happen, and actually has had to me a few of times since starting.  Is that you end up being put in the middle of parents disputes.  I’ve had mums drop off in the morning and say dad can’t pick up due to an argument or in one case alleged domestic violence. And thankfully a situation has never transpired where the dad has actually tried to come and pick up.  But I do know one childcare provider where they have.  This can be very awkward and uncomfortable for the nursery as without a court order they can’t stop the other parent from picking up but they may expect you to do so.

You may have to have uncomfortable conversations with family to.  As I said they will be effected by the nursery too.

But there may be situations where you need to address some of their behaviours.  Are they disrupting the children, are they friendly and approachable to parents are they ensuring that nothing dangerous is left out in potential shared areas like the kitchen and toilets.

Or even are they making sure these areas are left clean.  These are conversations you may need to have with household members.  Which if they are already frustrated with the nursery being there with these additional rules can lead to greater frustration.

Though, they do have to be mindful of the fact that anything that they do do can jeopardise your registration with the regulators like Ofsted and the care inspectorate and also your relationship with parents and staff.

Other negatives

Though, other negatives that people have said are that

Family will get sick!  No matter how much you clean, disinfect and tidy your home you and your family will get sick.  Hard to stay on top of cleaning ensuring illnesses don’t pass onto your family

During the first year of you having the nursery will be the worst in terms of sickness as you adapt to the nursery being in your home.  Though it does get better and being around all these children has meant that my immune system is really good now, and hardly get sick.

The nursery will effect other things as well, the lingering of smell of nappies is not the thing you want to be smelling when your relaxing in the evening an you will need to work hard to combat this smell and other smells that the nursery brings.

One thing you will find difficult to prevent, is your house will get messy.  You will find nursery stuff creeping into your personal home which can be infuriating for you or your family.

Even now I still find nursery stuff at my house as I put things in my pocket when tidying whilst I remember where it goes and end up forgetting about it and bring it home.

So, you need to be prepared for times when your house is just going to be a mess because of the nursery.

Also, when the nursery is in your home, it feels like you’re just cleaning all the time.

If you want to run a nursery from your home you have to kind of expect it

Your nursery rooms will get drawing on it, your toilets will end up having hand prints on it whether that’s from food or paint on the children’s hands.

One tip is to get washable paint, this is what we got and it made cleaning this up easier, but it still gets messy and can be time consuming and expensive keeping on top of all this.

Though, you should have the cost of this included in your budget.

Another negative of running a nursery in your home is you create real bonds with the children.  Some you might have had as young as 6 months and seen them develop, grow and then they leave.  It can be quite sad. Especially as they generally forget about you quite quickly when they do go to school.  I still remember the first two children that enrolled on the first day and wonder how they’re are doing.  But apart from stalking their parents on Facebook you lose that relationship with their child.

The final negative I want to mention is that running a nursery requires a lot of planning. Just to take the children out for a trip, you need to bring registers, have a risk assessment, have emergency contacts, notify parents in advance, have a first aid kit etc.  So, you need to be really organised in order to properly safeguard children. 

Even just starting up and preparing to open your own nursery requires a lot of planning and organisation and it can be difficult to manage.  I have created a course to help support and make it easier to open a nursery in your home.  But apart from the course there isn’t much information available online to support people which is unfortunate and can be challenging.