I Was a Daycare Teacher for Years. I Left Before I Burned Out

Hi, friends. We all know the demands on daycare teachers have shot up, and that the field has a huge staffing shortage. Our reader Christina worked as a daycare teacher in Germany for many years, until she realized she couldn't do it anymore. Now she's retraining for a new career. Here's her whole story.

Dear Christina, you were a daycare teacher for many years. Why did you choose this career in the first place?

Before I became a daycare teacher, I worked in retail for 13 years. Most of my shifts were in the afternoons and on Saturdays, and the schedule was very rigid. I wanted to switch to a job that was easier to combine with my child and family life.

My son, who is now an adult, has ADHD. At home he needed one-on-one support with lots of everyday things, and our afternoons were full of appointments for occupational therapy, behavioral therapy, and learning therapy.

My son was in daycare himself, so I was in constant contact with the teachers there. Those conversations planted the idea of becoming a daycare teacher myself. At the time (2010), daycares were desperately looking for teachers. So it was a job with good prospects.

What kinds of daycares did you work in, and how have the demands on daycare teachers changed over the years?

I worked in three different daycares, including as an inclusion teacher, which means you work one-on-one with a child who has special needs. We had to write up detailed support plans with the date, time, and goal for each activity. It didn't matter that on a Monday at 10 a.m., for example, we might be too short-staffed to offer any support activity at all, or that the child just wasn't in the mood.

Parent conferences had to be documented in writing, which is especially hard with parents who don't speak German. I often had to use the Google Translate app on my phone.

How have the kids changed over the years, and why do you think that is?

It was definitely true that more and more kids showed developmental delays and behavioral challenges. On top of that, there were more and more parents who didn't speak German. And all of it was supposed to be absorbed by far too few staff.

I think the increase in these challenges has to do with the fact that most parents work (or have to work) full time. Time together as a family keeps shrinking, and when there is time, a lot of parents are worn out from their jobs and their daily struggles. The government also gives parents the message (think full-day care programs) that they can hand off all responsibility to daycares and schools.

I've noticed that many parents today have lost that instinctive sense of what their kids need. Children up to elementary school age are often treated like babies and aren't allowed to be independent. Then daycare teachers and school staff have to make up for all of that.

You also worked as an inclusion teacher. Can you tell us more about that?

I worked as an inclusion teacher in a small daycare, with one child who needed extra support. He attended our daycare from the age of 2½ to 5. He had very challenging behavior. His parents had been in touch with the SPZ (a social pediatric center that evaluates children's development) early on, and the suspicion was autism spectrum disorder. But the entire time he was with us, there was never a diagnosis the doctors could confidently settle on.

He had intense meltdowns every few minutes. He screamed, swept toys off the shelves, and even threw chairs across the room. At meals, he'd throw his plate on the floor, and kids sitting near him would get bitten or hit.

Since my job was to be with him at all times so I could step in right away, I got bitten a lot too. I always had to take him out of the situation, because the screaming was so hard on everyone and the other children had a right to be protected.

I would stay with him in a quiet corner or an empty room until he calmed down. Then he needed comfort, and he could never tell us why he acted the way he did. The meltdowns came out of nowhere. Only very rarely were my coworkers or I able to step in beforehand to keep things from escalating.

Because I was always with him or near him, my coworkers had to look after the rest of the kids alone or run the activities, especially whenever I had to leave the room with him. This one-on-one care wasn't built into our staffing ratio at all. Officially, I was also responsible for all the other children in the daycare.

When and how did you realize you couldn't keep working in this job?

Two years ago, I realized the strain was becoming too much and that I couldn't do this job until retirement. I'd also had another baby, so I wanted a job with a work-from-home option, so I wouldn't have to put my child in care for too long too early.

How did it feel after you left the job?

In January 2024, I came across an interesting training program and actually got accepted. My last daycare was closing in July 2024, so I quit and started my new training on August 1, 2024. That made saying goodbye much easier, since I would have had to find a new daycare anyway. But I was also really looking forward to this new chapter in my career.

So what did you retrain as? 

I'm currently doing the preparatory service for the mid-level non-technical administrative service in the federal government. In Germany, that's a civil service career track with civil servant status.

What do you like about your new job?

I like the calm, and I like the areas of work, which I got to see in three different internships. And I love the very flexible hours, with up to three days a week working from home.

What have you learned from all of this? 

I learned to pull the plug and think about myself and my own needs too. I saw coworkers take their overwhelm out on the kids, and I didn't want to get to that point. I've also built up my ability to reflect enormously, since that's a cornerstone of working with children. It helps me in all kinds of situations in life.