Children are small and weak. They cannot speak well in words. Childcare workers have no choice but to protect them at the risk of their lives.
 One of the nursery school teachers said this as if she was chewing on a piece of paper. Everyone agreed that this was something that should never happen. However, the incident did occur. A three-year-old girl died of thirst and heat on the school bus in September under the blazing sun, and she never came back. The fear and sadness of being reprimanded by her preschool teacher, locked in a dark room, or hung upside down, the feeling of being called &#8220;ugly&#8221; by the adults with whom she spends her days, and the experience of not being able to rely on adults close to her, what impact will these one-year-old children have in the future?
<figure id="attachment_279100" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-279100" style="width: 1858px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e6ae99ab"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/12/f0545804b7d10c1487d28f729033921e.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-279100" class="wp-caption-text"> The assault took place at a daycare center, a &#8220;place of life&#8221; for children. The perpetrator, a nursery school teacher, was arrested. However, this is not the end of the story, and we must now turn our attention to a bigger issue.</figcaption></figure>
 On April 5, three nursery school workers were arrested for assaulting a child at a licensed nursery school in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture. There are suspicions of a cover-up by the director, who is in charge of management, and the case is expected to deepen still further as the outraged mayor of Susono City has filed a criminal complaint with the Shizuoka Prefectural Police. How could something like this happen at a daycare center where children are entrusted with care?
 One-year-old children are all pretty much the same. They are all cute, and they are all difficult to handle. It&#8217;s hard to say which child is cuter or more hateful. That is why I was surprised to learn that there were repeated assaults on a particular child.
 A veteran nursery school teacher working at a day-care center in Tokyo said, &#8220;So I was surprised to hear that there might be another cause.
 So I wondered if there might have been some other cause or trigger. I wondered if there might have been some other cause or trigger, such as the group mentality among nursery school teachers, or a power relationship that created a &#8216;bullying&#8217; trend, or the relationship with the guardians. Parents also vary in temperature. At a slightly older age, for example, it may be difficult to provide in-depth guidance to children from families who have expressed a lot of complaints.
 However, he also says that this is only a shade within the scope of &#8220;guidance,&#8221; and that &#8220;assault and verbal abuse are not considered.
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<h2> What We Have Seen in the Death of a Child Left Behind on a Shuttle Bus</h2>
 On September 5 of this year On September 5 of this year, a 3-year-old girl was &#8220;left behind&#8221; on a bus at an accredited child care center in Shizuoka Prefecture, and died of heat stroke. This made headlines when a 3-year-old girl died of heat stroke after being left on a bus at an accredited preschool in Shizuoka Prefecture on September 5 of this year. But this is not the first time this has happened. In 2007, a similar incident occurred in Kitakyushu City. In 2007, there was a similar incident in Kitakyushu City, and last year, the same incident occurred at a licensed daycare center in Nakano-shi, a neighboring city of Kitakyushu. In the end, we took it as someone else&#8217;s problem and didn&#8217;t &#8220;learn&#8221; from those incidents.
 Whenever a childcare accident occurs, the remote cause has been talked about, such as a lack of manpower at the site, exhaustion of childcare workers, etc. These are certainly one of the &#8220;causes. These may indeed be one of the &#8220;causes. But, in order to prevent these accidents from happening, it is necessary to have a good understanding of the causes of the accidents. However, there is one thing we can do to prevent such accidents from happening. The only thing we can do is to be aware that we are entrusted with the lives of children in the field of childcare, and to do our best to prevent such accidents from happening. No matter how many convenient apps and ICT In the end, the only way to check the attendance of a child is to see the child&#8217;s face and press the attendance button in an analog manner. Even with safety devices that are now mandatory to be installed on pick-up and drop-off buses to prevent children from being left behind, preschools that fail to conduct proper analog confirmation may end up simply going to press the button on the device.
 Hiroko Inokuma, a journalist familiar with childcare accidents and deputy director of a daycare center and kindergarten in Tokyo, said, &#8220;I am also an attendant of a shuttle bus.
 I often escort children on buses to and from school. Children are small, and if they fall asleep on the bus, it is difficult to see them just by looking over the seats. Sometimes they even get under the seat. So, after we finish picking up and dropping off the children, we go around to check each seat one by one, pointing them out. That is really important.
 There have been some reports in the press about having children practice honking the horn of the bus to prevent accidents where they are left behind, but this is not realistic because many cars nowadays do not sound their horns when the engine is turned off. If a child does not honk the horn, it will be the child&#8217;s fault, saying, &#8216;I taught my child and he did not honk. That is not the essence of accident prevention.
 It is important to &#8220;point and check&#8221; with the human eye, not with a system. However, there is an overwhelming lack of manpower to do so. But the field, which is in charge of lives, must do it.
 In 2012, the three parties (LDP, KOMIN and DPJ) agreed on a &#8220;comprehensive reform of social security and tax&#8221; in order to &#8220;replace&#8221; the consumption tax hike. The agreement included a promise to &#8220;review the standards for the placement of nursery school staff and to provide more childcare workers onsite. Ten years later, however, there is still no sign of improvement.
 However, ten years later, there has been no improvement in the situation. After I joined the company 30 years since I joined the company. I have been with the company for nearly 30 years, and we have always been short-staffed, but we have managed to keep going. When a childcare worker takes a leave of absence due to a corona positive, we are even more short-staffed, and there are days when it is a wonder that there are no accidents.
 The government has been surprisingly slow to act on day-care centers and day-care workers. This day-care center worker said that she has continued to work at her job &#8220;because I love it,&#8221; while enduring low wages.
<h2> What can parents do?</h2>
 What should parents who have left their children in day-care centers, or who intend to do so in the future, do?
 First, listen to your child&#8217;s own voice. If your child doesn&#8217;t want to go to daycare, don&#8217;t assume that he or she is being selfish, but see how he or she is doing. If the child is too young to talk, pay attention to the child&#8217;s daily moods, physical condition, and whether or not he or she has any bruises or injuries. Even if it is not an assault, if the child is not being watched closely by the caregivers, he or she is more likely to get injured.
 Also, please try to pick up and drop off your child directly at the preschool to see how he/she is doing. The bus will not give you a good idea of what the preschool is like. Even if you use the bus, please take the opportunity to visit the preschool as much as possible. For example, if the preschool puts too much effort into posting notices and newsletters in the room, there is a possibility that the parents are not paying attention to their children. Parents should first carefully observe with their own eyes how their children are being cared for.
 In response to this incident, it was announced on April 6 that a nationwide survey will be conducted to &#8220;ascertain the actual conditions at daycare centers and how local governments are handling them. This may be the tip of the iceberg. On the other hand, we should not forget that there are many nursery schools and childcare workers who are providing appropriate and fulfilling childcare services. One parent said, &#8220;My two children have been in daycare since they were 0 years old.
 One parent said, &#8220;My two children have been attending day-care centers since they were zero years old. I feel that the nursery staff has encouraged me and we have raised our children together. When I first started going to the nursery, I asked questions whenever I had doubts. I was still very anxious until I could build a relationship of trust with them. I think you have to spend a certain amount of time and effort to build a relationship of trust with the daycare center. Now that I have graduated from the preschool, all I can say is thank you.
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 Only parents can protect their children. Unfortunately, not all daycare centers are safe places. However, daycare workers also &#8220;grow up&#8221; in an appropriate relationship with parents. Being &#8220;busy&#8221; with each other is not a reason. The &#8220;now&#8221; of these children is now or never. Once again, we need to reconsider the weight and joy of raising children. Lives lost will never return.

 Children are small and weak. They cannot speak well. Childcare workers have no choice but to protect them at the risk of their lives. One of the nursery school teachers said with bitterness, "This is something that shouldn't happen. But in reality, it is not.

Death by bus abandonment, assault in the school… What you can do to prevent children from dying in daycare

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