Sustainable Routines: Understanding Daily Life in Family Child Care

 

Organizing daily activity involves negotiating many competing demands. Families must find ways to do what needs to be done with the resources they have and within the circumstances of their lives. People generally want to do things that have meaning and fit with their ideals of how life should be lived.

 

Family child care providers face some of the same challenges that families face, but providers also face challenges unique to caring for other people's children, running a small business, or participating in licensing or government programs.

 

We are talking with family child care providers to find out about what their daily life is like and how they make choices about the kinds of experiences they provide for children. Our goal is to find out what works and in which conditions. Ultimately, we seek to use this information to improve the services available to providers toward the goal of helping to promote children's health and well-being.

Are you a family child care (aka, family day care provider)?

If so, we want to hear about your life!

If you are a family child care provider and would like to participate in our research by talking with us about your daily life, please try one of the following:

• complete a brief online interest survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BIWBJCUJaJp1MpHX9eXpKYTKj9Pn8IfPfvzEH44KaXo/viewform)
• email me at: : holli[dot]tonyan[at]csun[dot]edu
• call me at (818-677-4970).

 

Participating in the research as a provider involves a few steps:

• Survey: We have a survey for you to fill out on your own (about 45 minutes).
  
• Chat: We will come to your home to talk with you for about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.
  
• Photos: We will leave a camera so that you can take pictures to show us daily life for you.
  
• Chat: We will return to talk with you about the pictures you take for another 1-2 hours.
  
• When: We will call to arrange
  
• Where: At your home
  
• Other: We will provide small tokens of our appreciation - we have Target gift cards for providers who complete the study ($100).

Are you a student and looking for research experience?

If you are a student interested in joining the lab and helping to conduct this research, please download and complete an application and return it to me by email at: holli[dot]tonyan[at]csun[dot]edu. Lab members first start by helping with transcription (typing up what was said during interviews) and then can get involved in other aspects of research once they have gained some experience.

Who We Are

Holli Tonyan is a professor of developmental psychology who studies how different ways of organizing children's lives child care impacts children's development. Her own children attended family child care and she is interested in documenting the many different ways that family child care providers organize daily activities.
Phone: (818) 677-4970 Email: holli.tonyan@csun.edu Web:http://www.csun.edu/~htonyan

Jennifer Romack is a professor of kinesiology who studies how children learn to move and become physically active. She works with child care providers to help them learn more about activities that promote physical activity.
Phone: (818) 677-3219 Email: jennifer.romack@csun.edu