TTMA Child care

[suelou18]

Sorry this is long. Apparently, I have a lot to say.

DD and DS will both be at the same center. We love it. They are licensed by the state and have the highest quality rating. The ratio for infants is 1 to 4, but they also had a retired woman who they all called grandma who volunteered several times a week to hold babies. Another pro is they provide all meals and snacks including formula, more variety than I would provide at home. DH also likes that there are windows into all rooms and they have an open door policy. I also learned that the staff all knows DD's name. Staff not even in her room have addressed her by name in town. We got a sheet every day until age 2 sharing how much she ate, diapers, and activities. I also know DD is happy there. She runs down the hall to her room.

The only con is cost. It is more expensive than in home. Oh, and waiting for a spot. We had to wait two extra weeks after I went back to work.

If you have any questions about our experience, feel free to ask. I seriously love our day care and talking about it.

[suelou18]

About the staff, the day staff all have either an associate's or bachelor's degree, usually in early childhood education. Most have been there for years. The afternoon staff is college kids, but they have all been great. We use them for our baby sitters. I got a lot of great advice from the staff as a first time mom.

[sterl724]

I'm a teacher, and was able to take the end of the school year off (combo fmla and sick time.) This allowed us to not need daycare until baby is almost 6 months old.

It also allowed us a long time to look. (I started calling places in October - about 10 months before we needed a placement.) However, we live in a very small town. (Population is about 1700.) H and I also both work in small towns, and each drive roughly 30 minutes, opposite directions. There are no centers between us, without going to one of the bigger cities, but these are all out of the way for us, and would be super inconvenient. We really only had the option for in-home.

There were two we looked at seriously, because they were the most local time where we live. (We wanted the ability fit either of us too easily do drop off and pick up. If we'd fine to the towns we work in, that wouldn't happen.) One lady was about 5 minutes out of town the direction I drive. Our neighbors grandkids go there, and the lady is pretty highly recommended. Unfortunately, she is full. We asked fyi be contacted if she had an opening come up.

The other is about 5 minutes toward h's work. It's a husband and wife team. Both have ed degrees. They are licensed, etc. Because they both do it, it double the number of kids allowed by the state. (16 instead of 8). She didn't charge teachers for summers, it's in our school district (so when C is school age, she does the bus), etc. A lady I work with send her two daughters there. (I actually found this out after taking to the daycare. Co-worker have a good recommendation.) Price was right, so we reserved a spot there.

[moutonrouge]

For a little while SIL1 will be staying with us to care for DD. We're paying her the going au pair rate. That'll give us some leeway to get off the wait list at our preferred centers.

We applied to 5 centers - 4 are national chains and 1 is smaller. The smaller one is by our house and our plan is to transfer her there as soon as she gets in. But if we have to use another center in the meantime, so be it.

DC now requires all daycare teachers to have a college degree or certificate. They all have decent curricula and good ratios. We've been on wait lists for 7 months now but it's a year wait here at a minimum. So we'll see.

We can afford a nanny, but it would be a stretch. Theyre also available for less time than a center, which sucks. If we haven't gotten into any centers by the time SIL goes back home, we would do a nanny for a short time.

There aren't many in home daycares here. I looked into it and none were nearby (or along our commute) so I didn't call anywhere or do anymore research into that.

[suelou18]

We went to two centers by our house. A lot of centers in our town don't take infants. We went on the wait list for both. Thankfully, we got the call from our first choice and that is where we are today. I didn't ask many questions because both told us more than I would have thought to ask. They both did a good job of selling themselves.

[muskiefan]

Novel ahead!
tl;Dr we do a combo of in home and preschool for ours

Currently DD 1 goes to preschool 3 days/wk. I chose that center because it's very reputable, I went there as a kid, and my mom, who was a teacher in the local district said the kids who went to this place were definite ready for K when they were done. She goes to the in-home sitter 2 days per week. Also, i cannot take her to any closer preschools because they are 2 hours, 3-4 days per week and H and I work outside the home and would not have transportation for her.

DS goes to an in home sitter 4 days per week. I found her via SOS on FB. She messaged me and told me she didn't realize I'd be moving 2 mins away from her. She was my babysitter when I was little and we had kept in touch (but obviously not close friends). I love her bc she knows me and loves my kids. She writes a daily progress report, has started PT DS and is affordable. I tried care.com and some of the people wanted $25 per hour and we could not afford that.

DD 2 will go to in home sitter 4 days per week as well.

The problem we are running into is that our in home sitter wants DS to go to the center 2 days/wk to alleviate her load once the baby starts. We added up the potential cost for all of it and it's $2,000 per month. Which is a hard pill to swallow. We'd like to hold off a couple of months and save ourselves $250 per month.

Now we are considering a nanny, but with DD 1 starting K in 2018, I feel like it's bad timing.

[jnow]

I haven't read. Dd1 goes to day care full time. It is associated with a church even though we aren't religious. Our old neighbors recommended them and we loved them when we visited.

I feel like she has learned so much there and loves interacting with everyone.

We have only had 1 major issue and it was addressed immediately and to my liking. And then a few smaller issues but I'm not quiet about them and they were all resolved.

I have no experience with other forms of childcare but to me the pros are socialization, not having to worry about a nanny calling out and a more strict "curriculum " (more structure i guess)

Con: your kid will be sick a lot in the beginning.

[jnow]

Apr 7, 2017 16:01:17 GMT -5 suelou18 said:

About the staff, the day staff all have either an associate's or bachelor's degree, usually in early childhood education. Most have been there for years. The afternoon staff is college kids, but they have all been great. We use them for our baby sitters. I got a lot of great advice from the staff as a first time mom.

Yep agree with this. All the. "Teachers" are enthusiastic and love my kid. Even the ones in older classrooms that dd1 hasn't been in yet. They know all the kids and love them.

[britab]

I'm a teacher and we still don't have childcare lined up for baby in fall. Centers are just more than we can afford. We have called about 30 in home places and only 2 had openings and we didn't like them.

DD1 has a spot at a nice in home preschool/daycare. It's nature based and they do a ton of hands on learning but they have no infant spot.

I'm going back to work for the last month of the school year and a college girl from church is watching the girls.

Ugh! Infant care is so hard to find/afford.

[britab]

Minnesota has a Parent Aware website where you can see all licensed providers in your area. It has been helpful for a starting point. Not sure if all states have something similar.

[seadragon2013]

I've been a SAHM for the past year and a half, but I'm hoping to go back to work in the fall. Right now, DS (4 yo) goes to preschool 20 hrs a week. He's in the special needs program run by the school district and has another year of it before transitioning to kindie. Our plan when I return to work is to get a nanny or join a nanny share and keep him at preschool. In our metro area, a nanny will be less expensive than two at a center and similar to two at an inhome.

In the past when I was working, we had DS at a small inhome (4 kids) and then a local center. Both options worked out well, but I especially appreciated the predictability of the center. They kept the infant room ratio at around 3:1 and someone was always holding or interacting with the smaller babies.

[mikaela20]

I'm not sure what we will do. The earliest the ones around us have opening are for Sept 2018 and I go back to work in March. I'm on waitlists so hopefully it will work out. They are so expensive $1400-1600/Month which will be hard to swing but we will have to manage.

There is an in home one that is set up like a daycare centre that I like. But again nothing until fall 2018. That one is only $1000/Month so I really hope that one works out.

Our mat leave just got increased to 16 months here so I'm thinking worst case I have to stay home longer until a spot opens up.

Why is childcare so hard to find and so expensive!?

[jnow]

Yea the cost sucks. And it makes me sad that childcare employees make crap money. They are saints.

[jellykat2]

We are also at a small center associated with a church. We aren't super religious, but have joined the church as they have a super kid friendly service that dd1 loves. It also makes for a very small community feel to daycare.

The center is small, and feels much more like a school than the other larger chain centers we looked at. All of the rooms have a lead teacher that has early childhood education degrees and most of the "aids" are working towards this. I love the structure that dd1 gets and feel she has really learned a lot.

I was never comfortable with in home daycares, but that was just my personal preference.

I would say tour as many places - in home and/or centers that you can. I found when we toured centers, the one we chose just felt right.

[elsmom]

We have a nanny that we love. She came to the US thru an au pair program and her hourly is totally reasonable. I work 3 days/week and when it was just DD she watched her 2 of those days and MIL watched her the 3rd. Now that we've added a 2nd baby to the mix, we're going to have our nanny come all 3 days (but MIL is still coming the 3rd day with her). Basically, MIL was totally overwhelmed when DD was little, although she'd never admit it. Also DD is super busy now, and I want her to still have some fun one-on-one time and not be held back by her baby brother all the time. MIL isn't thrilled with this arrangement but I don't really care because it's what I'm comfortable with. DH feels bad that his mom is unhappy but I'm not backing down (harsh, I know)...most of my mistrust comes from an incident where our dog snapped and caught E in the face when she was about 6 months old and MIL was babysitting. She still says she doesn't really know how it happened and that's what blows my mind. She knows you can't trust a dog and baby alone so why doesn't she know what happened? Anyway, I digress...Im happy with our arrangement now that we'll have our nanny all 3 days. And on one of my days at home we go to preschool at a coop so I'm there the whole time and she gets time to socialize with other kids. Our nanny also takes her to local open gyms and story times at the library.
We've only had the nanny call in sick once or twice when she was really bad and my husband's job is flexible enough that he can work from home/take a day himself when this happens.

[erinshelley21]

My MIL watches DS and will watch DD when I go back to work. It has its pros and cons.
Pros: free, flexible, they can go when they are sick, free
Cons: no structure/schedule, he prefers her over me most days (this is kid dependent), guilt (I feel bad that we don't pay her, but Dh is her kid that does everything for her and we try to do something nice for her every year). I also worry that he isn't socialized enough because he's the only kid there from 8:30-3:30