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D.C. Area Babies
Daycare suggestions
I will be returning to work in December and need to start looking at daycares for DD. My Mom was going to come in from PR and watch baby for a few months but plans have changed and I need to find daycare asap. We are close to Springfield, Lorton, Alexandria. DH works in Arlington so we'd consider looking in that location as well. I'd appreciate your recommendations.
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Re: Daycare suggestions
Take a look at this spreadsheet to see how folks found daycare around here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p6LhXlNI9FdU2cVy0kCNZeQ&output=html
are you looking at in-home or centers?
- LH
I'm open to both, thanks.
Wow, good to know! Thanks much!
I just want to address this because I see the question on this board a lot. There are a couple of reasons why you may not get a lot of specific suggestions. One is I, for one, am reluctant to name my daycare provider on a public message board. It's an in-home provider, and God forbid there are some stalkers on here... I don't want an axe murderer showing up at her door. Crazy, I know, but I'm a paranoid person.
Also, daycare is SO personal. There are so many factors that go into choosing, and there are so many options in this area, it's very hard to make a useful suggestion. For instance you are asking about three very large areas - Springfield, Lorton and Alexandria. There will literally be hundreds of options in those places. So we'd need a lot more info to make suggestions - like where exactly in those areas? Near your home - wherever that is - or near work - wherever that is? Or, what is your commute route, and do you maybe want a place along that route?
And, what are you looking for? Flexible hours? What price range? Do you lean more towards in-home or center? Do you have a feeling about how many other kids you want at the place, what ages, etc.?
Anyway, I think it's tough to make suggestions to folks... we could all tell you where our kids are in daycare (which again, I think people are reluctant to do), but that still may not be helpful. It's more likely we can make suggestions about things like why we chose certain types of daycare, or what we pay, or whatever - for comparison after you've narrowed things down a bit.
Finally, you may be looking for daycare in a place where none of have any suggestions - I don't think we're a very big sample of the population. So if someone posts "Can anyone recommend daycare in (fill in the name of a city here)" and I don't know, I can't reply to that post.
So - I suggest first looking at a list of daycare places in specific geographic locations. If you're talking Fairfax County, you can look up by zip code on the Office for Children part of their website - you'll find everyone with a Fairfax county license. Then you can go to the state website and do another search on everyone who has a state license. Maybe Alexandria City has something similar (though remember that part of Alexandria is in Fairfax County, so those would be listed on the Fairfax County site). I don't know about Lorton.. .but you get the gist.
Here are some links:
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/childcare/search/
https://www.dss.virginia.gov/facility/search/licensed.cgi
I appreciate your response. I could totally understand why one wouldn't want to name their daycare provider. I have been on both sites and have pretty much narrowed my search to 5 daycare providers. We will start visiting them in the next couple of weeks. I guess we'll have to try a few centers and/or in home daycares to see what works best for us.
If there are centers that we should definitely stay away from, that info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
We use a center in Kingstowne however waiting lists are 1 year plus for newborns at centers in most places in the DC metro area.
- LH
I'm sorry you're having such a tough time finding daycare. I don't think that anyone here has forgotten how tough the search can be; however, the posts above made several good points about why posts asking for daycare recommendations don't get many responses. To recap, though, here are two that stand out to me:
--Giving out daycare info. is different than giving out info. on a good seamstress or photographer. People tend to be a tad more protective of their children than they are of their wedding dresses. If someone posts where they take their child to daycare, they are publicly announcing where their child spends the day. Many people aren't going to be comfortable with that.
--There are limits on how many infants a site can take. If someone knows that her center is at capacity or isn't expected to have any openings within the right timeframe, she probably won't respond to the post. I think that Artslvr's chart on how people found their child care is a lot more helpful than a bunch of responses saying "I have a great center, but it's full."
I don't recall your specific post. I have posted often to posts in general when I think I can provide useful information. Likely a very small percentage of this board knows the exact area(s) you're looking for. I have mentioned my center in a few posts, which as pps said, is a little scary just because it's providing location information about my child to ANYONE on a public message board, not just the OP. It generally has a year waiting list. You aren't specifying much info either - where you've tried or gotten on waitlists, where you've looked and not found anything for anyone to respond to.
And, for example, I didn't respond to the OP, because I don't know anything about the areas she listed, except a little in Arlington. I could recommend my center, but she wants something in December, which doesn't work with a year waiting list. I also only looked at one in-home in N. Arlington, and it doesn't have any openings. If you posted that you wanted something in NW, I and most people on here would have no idea because we've never looked for anything in DC. Plus a good number of women here are SAHMs or have other arrangements so they couldn't answer you either. There are numerous reasons why you don't get the answers you want, not just that everyone is set against helping you.
I think I did respond to you previously. I actually only got on three center waitlists because the whole daycare thing just made me want to bury my head in the sand (the denial strategy). But we eventually came up on two of the three lists. Take the Arlington Co daycare center list, and start calling all the ones that take under age 2. Have you tried that, even though it's a lot of calling?
I think the number of regular posters on this board with Arlington/Alex daycare you could count with your fingers. There's never been many posts. Even though I live and work in Arlington, I know very few people using daycare in Arlington. Have you checked with Infant Toddler Daycare Service (OP, this could work for you) - they are a network of in-home providers, although with any in-home they only fill space a few months prior to enrolling. But you could get a sense of where their providers are. DC Urban Moms listserve has a daycare section, which is hit or miss.
As I said, my daycare is full for under 2 and in Olney MD - do you want everyone on this board to give their reason why they aren't responding? Everyone is very spread out in this area and there aren't many members on this forum. I understand the stress of finding daycare - we went on 4 waitlists at centers and got into none by the time she was 3 months old. The only way I found my in-home daycare was because she was the neighbor of one of my best friends in the area. I suggest calling and interviewing as many in-home places as you can, also sometimes churches have daycare that they don't advertise. Good luck.
I both use and like the Infant Toddler model. It's reassuring because I get emails from Infant Toddler when they stop by detailing their visit and they come more often then county or state to inspect.
To give you an idea about how I approached searching, I looked up all the daycare centers in the area near my work/home in Falls Church, made appointments with each of them and over a few weeks visited each of them. This gave me a great idea about the cost of daycare centers and the services they provide. They were all generally very nice and very expensive. I also went to the Infant Toddler orientation. They're very helpful because they ONLY give you the names of people who will have openings when you need care in the area you are looking for care. I interviewed these ladies as well as some other in home day care providers I saw advertised on Craig's List and DC Urban Moms. In the end I felt comfortable with a few different providers and we chose based on proximity, cost and the other intangible factors that were important to my husband and I.
I wish you best of luck, it is hard - my experience suggests that in home daycares for infants are MUCH easier to find that have space available than centers. We intend to move Molly to a center for preschool when she is 3. Up until then we felt the socialization she would receive in a center was less important than the individualized care she receives at the in home location we chose. This however is variable and subject to your own preferences and options.
I looked into Infant Toddler too and they were very helpful but none of the providers in my area were a good fit. If you are in Alexandria, there is an listserv that helped me find daycare. If you are interested, email me at toreybATgmail and I can send you the details.
Finding childcare was very stressful on us and we are still on two centers waiting lists but while I was on maternity leave I did find a great in-home provider and we have been so happy and will not be putting her in a center until pre-school.
Listen, I totally hear you. It's stressful, and not something I think I'll ever forget! I only had two months to find daycare - after I had my baby and while I was on mat. leave (for lots of boring, detailed reasons) and so many people told me I was totally out of luck because centers had these ridiculous wait lists. Cue lots of crying on my part - lots and lots of crying and panicking. Thank goodness I found out in-home tends to not have wait lists, so I was not only NOT out of luck, I had several wonderful choices.
For me, Office for Children in Fairfax County was my hero - I even ended up talking to the Director at one point, and she was so nice to me. Does Alexandria City or Arlington County have anything similar? I'm a fan of using the services of whatever municipality you live in - they should be helping you.
Good luck to you - it takes a lot of work for sure!!!
Oh dear, I missed this one. Well, I think because most of the ladies on this board are really nice we're willing to overlook some misdirected frustration. I know you know it's not our fault that we didn't have specific recommendations for you... I know that you are feeling really discouraged. And for that, I'm sorry.
Are you for real? We all know exactly how hard it is to find something and most of us had to do the leg work and figure it out.
And in my case, we ended up deciding on the daycare is at DH's work, so unless you or your DH works there, you can't use it and even then there is long @ss wait list. So why would I recommend that to you or anyone else?
Your post kinds of offends me because this is a public message board and people give info and advice on a volunteer basis. We are not mandated to find your daycare for you. Chastising us for not being helpful enough is just offensive IMO.
I'm sure you are a lovely person and I don't mean to sound like a b*tch, but try to remember that we HAVE been in your shoes.
I am with you bh2720. This is a public message board and it is not mandated that everyone post a useful reply. I have posted questions at times and sometimes don't get a response but I don't go crying about it.
We have all put in hard work and time to find our providers so we know its not easy.
There are many other resourses that other posters have listed such as the VA DSS and Infant Toddler (what I went with). Those were the suggestions I got and I had to put in the time and effort on my own to find a provider.
Good luck to you and I hope you find someone soon.
Thank you! We actually are very close to this KinderCare, we will go in for a visit and see if it works for us. I've called a few providers and will be visiting them in the next couple of weeks. There were two we liked in Kingstowne but they won't have openings until July 2010. Thanks again!