I'm sure we're in a small minority, but DH & I don't want our child to receive any kind of religious instruction. It seems like about 90% of childcare facilities and providers in town are Christian. Fine for most people but not us.
Is anyone else looking for non-religious care?
Re: Hard to find non-religious daycare!
Dh's father is actually going to watch LO but we would never put her in any type of religious daycare. That's our preference. Luckily his parents have the same views as we do pretty much..so that shouldn't be a problem.
Sorry you're having such a hard time, you have have to find a babysitter instead of a daycare. If they watch X number of kids they usually have licenses, etc. as well.
We live in a city in the Midwest.
We do have Kindercare, I've contacted them and waiting to hear back. It's not impossible to find non-religious care, just surprisingly challenging.
I would love to find a place where we could have LO go for years and not just until he's able to learn about Jesus. I don't think it's that weird to want to find a childcare provider who has similar views as we do.
Kids generally stay in the same daycare (unless there is a problem) until they are old enough to go to school.
Havent had this problem- most of the daycares here are not religiously based.
In fact, I want to send our LO to the Jewish Community Center (more like a YMCA than a religious daycare), but they wont take infants.
I understand where you are coming from. We live in a town of about 50,000, and there are 7 daycare centers in the whole town. 4 of them are religion based, 1 doesn't take any infants under 1 year, 1 has a 2+ year wait list, and the other one I've been waiting for 5 months already, and has had zero openings. It's incredibly frustrating. Daycare here is scarce, especially for infants (under 24 months), and once I find a place, he's staying there for a while. I don't want any kind of religious instruction at all.
There are also no big chains like you mentioned...they are all independent day care centers.
That's weird. Religious-based daycare is definitely the minority where I am.
What about in-home care? Is it any religion or just Judeo/Christian? Is there maybe one based on another religion?
Also, depending on your reasons, you might want to just consider whether the daycare is "religious" or whether it just meets in a church/temple. Most "Christian" preschools where I am don't offer any religious curriculum so I would assume there are "religious" daycares that also don't do that.
Good luck.
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We have an in-home provider as our top candidate right now. I feel like I am some kind of creepy stalker who's trying to win her affections, lol. She has told me twice already that I should call back when I'm a little further along and then I can come meet her... so I'm looking into other options while I wait.
This is more just me being goofy, but would you send your kid to a place called Children's Heaven? It sounds like a kiddie funeral home! Totally creeps me out.
This is exactly how our area is with private schools! I'm hoping DH's job moves us by the time DS has to go to school. I have no idea what we will do here.
I'm a Christian but I don't think I would ever send my child to a Christian school. I think I would only do it if our public schools (which are really good) went ape $%*^ or something.
For me, it's about being educated about the "rest of the world." Also, I think religious education should be left to parents, not school.
I went through this with my first kiddo. It was really difficult to find something AND it was more expensive than church-based daycare systems.
We pay tons of money for this highly-rated preschool that has no church affiliations, and they still make my DS (4) pray and say the pledge of allegiance. DS also gets upset if one of us says "god" or something like that. It drives me bonkers, but he likes the school and I'm not going to pull him out at with less than a year until kindergarten.
If there are things you specifically don't want your child exposed to, I'd try to narrow that down and ask about it specifically. For example, I was okay with singing christian-based songs, but I didn't want DS to be forced to pray. I also didn't want him to be taught that taking god's name in vain is wrong. I think the other major thing for me is that I didn't want him to learn about heaven or hell (specifically hell).