...gameboys, baseball and pokemon cards? I am a director at a child care and after school care for kids up to age 12. We are in a small town in missouri. We don't allow kids to bring in cell phones, i pods, baseball cards or any kind of trading cards. Under our policies we state ABSOLUTELY these items are not allowed and if a child brings them in they will be taken away and not returned until a parent comes to pick the item up. No exceptions. Many of our kids did not like that policy and even some of our parents had problems with that policy. But we said, sorry that's our policy, those items aren't allowed, that's it. We are in a small town and for a while we were the only after school care facility in our town, so therefore we really had no competition. In March 2011 another after school care facility opened down the street and for the first time since about '96 we had competition and didn't think they could compete with us.- we were wrong! Within a month after they opened we had 12 different parents pull their children out of our center and enroll in their new center. We were shocked. When I was at the soccer field I ran into one of the parents who took their child out of our center and she said, 'i don't understand why you don't allow kids to trade cards. Kids like to that stuff, their not allowed to do that at school, but at after school care I don't see why you don't allow that.' She then went on to tell this new place allows children to bring in trading cards. They allow kids to have more freedom and that was their reason for switching centers and she also said other parents switched for the same reason. It seems like such a small reason! When we checked the other centers' web site, sure enough right there it said kids are welcome to bring gameboys (as long as they turn the sound down), baseball cards, etc. As long as it's not causing a problem, your child is welcome to bring these items in. When summer 2011 the number of kids at our summer camp was WAY DOWN!!! When fall came and the kids went back to school the number of kids at our center went down even more. In January 2012 we had a little more than half the number of kids from the previous January. This was also reflected in the number of people calling to enquire for information on our center and the number of visitors which was very few. Years past we had visitors all the time. I suggested to some of the other employees maybe we should consider allowing kids to bring some of these items in. Their response to me: absolutely not! They claimed that this was temporary and some families would come back and the other center was growing too quickly. We would be fine they said and we couldn't give in on our policies and rules. In the summer of 2012 we almost didn't have a summer camp- we were now down to less than half the number of kids from January 2011. In November 2012 we came up with a grand idea- offer half price tution for the first 3 months. We thought this would hit it out of the park. It brought in 8 new students, which was great but way below what we were hoping. We were thinking it would bring in about 20-30 new kids. Nope, just 8. Here we are in Feb 2013. The other center is just crippling us. Do we allow kids to bring these items into our center and let them have more freedom and just try it out. If our numbers don't go up soon... I worry we will be in serious trouble! Every summer we would have college girls come to work for us. This summer we can only bring back 2 girls. We don't have the number of kids- we don't have the need for too many workers. I'm about out of my mind... what to do. I would love to hear from day care directors, day care workers, etc.