The children only sporadically play with each other. They mill about individually, climbing over each other like puppies to get to a toy or to the adult. Children learn to see the world through the eyes of an adult they love. There is also a falsely upbeat style and tone to day care that is grating. Providers habitually smile and talk in positive, animated tones.
Lights are always bright.
Toys and bodies spill everywhere. Toddlers may be delighted for an hour, even two, but the day wears on and on. The pace of an individual child's day, the sorrow or wonder, all delicacy of feeling and reflection, is lost in the steamroller of the curriculum-driven day. Story after story, rhyme after rhyme, line up, run outside, potty, snack through it all, one senses most of these children are quite alone. The workers are here on overlapping shifts from six in the morning to six at night or even longer.