Courtesy of:https://www.expatica.com/nl/living/family/dutch-daycare-preparing-expat-kids-for-school-89281/

Keeping your children safe is the first thought that comes to all parent’s minds even if there wasn’t a global pandemic everywhere you go. Now that we are actually in a pandemic with new variants coming out every couple of months, the fear of pre-school children getting sick is at an all-time high. With new variants of Covid such as Omicron, all schools were forced to close, except for pre-school and daycares. Jaclyn Silverman is a Full-time worker at Thornhillwoods Daycare who is truly passionate about her job and loves children. Her main personal goal is to give the kids the basic education in which they rightfully deserve while following Covid protocol and keeping safe. After a long and informative talk with her, I now see why it is so important to follow these Covid Guidelines when being in a public setting within closed spaces. After asking her about how the lockdown affected her style of work she had this to say. “The lockdown has affected daycare workers and the kids. Before the lockdown parents were able to come in and get their kids ready for the day, take their jackets off or put their bags away, bring their water in, and make sure they have everything they need. because of Covid, we are trying to limit all of the parents or as many people coming into the daycare, to limit the spread of Covid. This can make the kids very stressed and makes it harder on my job to get them to follow the rules”. This only covers the portion of what it’s like for the child to not say bye to their parents before entering the classroom, but what about Covid and Covid safety. I asked Jaclyn what are daycares doing to ensure that the children are safe and not spreading Covid after they leave the building. with full confidence, she had this to say. “So for the workers, we started wearing N-95 masks to make sure we don’t get sick from the kids and the kids don’t get sick from us. We also have to wear safety face shields and we always wash our hands whenever we leave or enter the building. We use A LOT!!! of hand sanitizer whenever we handle the kids and change diapers. For the kids we use hand sanitizers as well, we try to distance the kids as best as possible, which is surprisingly not as hard as you think. Masks are NOT mandatory for the children there. we just try to make sure they wash their hands as much as possible and use gloves when helping the kids blow their nose”. Jaclyn says she puts 100% trust in herself and her co-worker’s abilities to stay safe and follow the Covid criteria to stop the spread of Covid specifically in the daycare sector. Even though Covid is constantly spreading, Jaclyn wants to ensure parents seriously look into the daycare they want for their children to ensure maximum safety. She says at this moment she can only speak for herself and speak through the things she sees constantly.