The Day Care Dilemma

Oh the perils of day care. I remember the fear/panic/desperation when Miss K was fast approaching 1 year old and we were going to be back to the grind full time.

A colleague of mine is near crunch time on their search for appropriate care for their daughter and therein lies a lot of questions and brings back some not so pleasant memories.

Do you go back to work at all? Do you opt for licensed government run care? Do you rely on the help of family or friends? Do you try to find a home day care that will take your offspring? Do you leave them home with the family dog and hope they can both fend for themselves? I'm only half kidding about the last one…

It's a tough choice either way. Staying home is not an option for many. Most want and/or need the extra income. Some want to go back to work just to get away from the kid or kids for a few hours. In the case of having 3 or more kids staying home might be more financially responsible than going back to work due to the shear cost of it all. 

I knew from the get go that I would be going back to work. I knew that the things we wanted to do and experience in life would require a second income. I have a well paying job and it would more than offset the cost of child care. 

I needed the escape from bottles, diapers and constant talk with kids under 2. I needed adult conversation and a sense of self that I knew could not come from being at home.

Even if the means were there to stay at home, i think I would have placed Miss K in some sort of part time program for her sanity and mine. We have no family that is close by that Miss K could spend a lot of time with, we needed her to get out and get used to other people other than mom and dad, and I would have done it even if our lottery tickets came through and both myself and her dad would be home. I love her to death, but I cannot spend 24hrs a day, 7 days a week for years on end with her.

At first I was all for the day care centre. It seemed a good logical choice. It was open all the time, it didn't have issues with sick days, it was regulated, how could it be a bad place for my kid??

We toured the local centre and it was pretty good, but I wasn't terribly blown away. Adequate, learning based, good food, stable environment it had all that but lots of red flags were thrown up in my mind.

I didn't like the impersonal feel of it all. They had dedicated staff for each room but what if someone was sick or moved to another job within the building? The person your child had connected to, was now suddenly gone. Maybe it would build a sense of resilience in a kid, but I found it sad that the one person they might have gained some security from or attachment to could be gone at a moments notice.

The little kids didn't get to play with the big kids and vice versa. How is this helpful? How is my kid going to learn to play with all kids of all ages. Yes, it probably eliminates some unsavoury behaviours from developing at all stages by keeping kids in their own age groups, but at the same time how are they going to function in their personal lives when there's different age kids around? 

My personal feeling is that the older kids can learn from the young ones and the reverse is true too. Miss K's favourite buddy when she was 2 was a 6 year old boy and he loved playing with her too…go figure.

Back to licensed day care, why in the hell do we have to pay for stat holidays and days that the centre is closed? WTF? My kid is not there and you still expect me to fork over 50 bucks a day so you can stay home.

Ya, ya I get it, it's an employer/employee relationship and you'll ask if I expect to get paid for stat holidays and my vacation etc… Yup, I do, but I look at as you are providing a service to me, and if I don't require that service, I'm not paying you to go to the beach or skiing or whatever. i pay you handsomely when my kid is there, I'm not paying you when the centre is not even open to take my kid.

To me its like having a favourite restaurant and you go there every Friday for lunch, but twice a year they close on Friday's for inventory and they still send you a bill for lunch. That's total B.S., this is the same with day care centre's.

So, we ruled out the government controlled centre's pretty quickly. Then you're pretty much left with family or home sitters.

Well as mentioned, family was out of the question, so that meant a home day care.

That can be a scary process too. These places are not regulated and you can find all sorts of varieties of child care in the process.

Wonderful people that would be fabulous with your child but with a house that you would want to disinfect your kid every time they came home. There are those with kids of there own that they can't control, you could only imagine what adding  few more to the mix would bring. Those people with personal issues and circumstances that render them unsuitable to work with children on a day to day basis. There are some the have a lovely home and space for kids but on some level you just feel that they could possibly be psycho

Through much pain and agony we've ended up with 2 good people to take care of Miss K. We lost our first sitter in a series of unfortunate events, but ended up with another who treats our girl like family.

And maybe that is the bottom line of the day care dilemma. Where can you leave or take your kids that you feel they will be loved and treated like you would?

Maybe it is licensed facility, maybe its your neighbour, maybe your aunt, maybe someone you found online or through word of mouth.

it's whatever makes you comfortable both by giving you a warm fuzzy feeling and is comfortable on the pocketbook. It has to work for your kid and you too.

We got lucky. I think the home day care providers out there, and I mean the good ones, don't get enough credit. 

When we're home on weekends and Miss K mentions how much she misses the sitter and her friends there. Or funnier yet, calls me the sitter's name.

Two things happen. First, there is always the little pang of envy that your kid sometimes spends more time with these caregivers than you do and a little spark of anger that they called you someone else's name. 

But that is quickly replaced by the realization that they love the people they spend their day with. Your kid sees them as part of their world and their "family". That they are not trying to replace you, but see these other folks as an extension of family,  and you know deep down just how loved and cared for they are.

Those things make me happy. Yes some days it sucks being away from her for 8 hours, but I know both her and I are going to be better people for it.

On a lighter note, Miss K asked this morning if she could stay home with the dog instead of going to the sitter's. In some aspects it would work, they both nap, Miss K is big enough to open the door for the dog if he needs to pee. They like to play in the snow, what could go wrong? I asked her who would make her lunch, and her response was the dog could probably make her cheesy noodles. He's a pretty smart dog, but I'm thinking her 3 year old logic is flawed.

Til next time…I hope everyone has someone wonderful to care for their kids no matter how often or seldom that is