Thinking on daycare

Edsilva14 · March 2016

I'm 18 weeks and this is my first soon to be living child. I have heard that day care is so expensive and there are waiting lists. Has anyone started looking at day care? How have you found centers for day care in your area. I'm in the VA area.

ThisisNumber3 · March 2016

Yes!! Start calling around now!

kcolly32 · March 2016

Yes I started checking them out at the beginning of the second trimester. Most of them had a wait list over a year long, some were just too crazy expensive and others just so far out of the way it would be a hassle to use. The one I'm set on is about $190 a week, regardless of how much or how little you use it for. I'm waiting to find out the sex to turn in all my applications, which is the end of this month. I wouldn't wait too much longer, most do have huge wait list and all the ones here you have to tour to even get on the list. To find daycares in my area I just used google and called them.

bsckgb7 · March 2016

I've been on wait lists since December. They have all told me, they don't anticipate vacancies until the baby is crawling age. So not sure what I am going to do.

Katienu · March 2016

I agree, start now and when begin your search it will help you decide what is right for you.

We were knew to the area so I found the state list of approved daycares. They listed centers and in-home and provided prices, hours and days open. It was a great resource. I am sure your state has something similar...word of mouth is always good too!

Ceventa · March 2016

Start interviewing day-cares now and gathering enrollment information. Baby is already enrolled in the same school as DS and the deposits are paid since this school enrolls early in the year. Best wishes!

ballofmeat · March 2016

I am 17 and a half weeks and we just put our deposit down because there was only one vacancy at our first choice near our house. We live in a fairly rural area in the Midwest and had trouble getting a spot. I would start ASAP!

Edsilva14 · March 2016

Thanks for the advice...I am going to start looking!

Edsilva14 · March 2016

Someone told me about care.com and I started searching for others using google. It seems you have to pay in order to run background checks or get more info on day care centers or nannies before seeing your options. IS this the case that you have to pay in order to run background checks?

Jenniferk08 · March 2016

Yes looking now is a good idea. I waited too long and had to put my son into 2 different day cares until my first choice had a full time spot for him.

It it was a big center that I loved. He was there 45 hours a week. I paid about $18k a year for the privilege of going back to work and paying taxes.

Take advantage of any flex spending/dependent care savings programs your job offers. I'm able to put $5k aside pretax into flex spending for childcare costs.

ramoseecology · April 2016

I haven't found an open daycare yet at my top places, so I'm still adding myself to wait lists with the places giving little hope I'll be able to enroll anytime before 2017. Anyone else in the same boat? STMs in my office keep saying something will shake out but it's starting to concern me. All the places have about 8 openings total for infants each and say there isn't money to be made in infant care so there is no incentive to increase capacity. This seems crazy that I saved to be able to afford the high cost care and plan to go back to work but can't find openings!

DoxieLove05 · April 2016

Yes where I am (SoCal) there are wait-list for the next year... and I am finding the prices to be outrageous (300-400/week) but there is not much I can do about it. Even the in home centers cost the same. This is the time I wish I had family close by!

kwilliams3402 · April 2016

We are on half a dozen wait lists and have been since January, and the first opening we've heard of will be Jan. 2017. Our current plan is to begin the nanny search when baby is born if we're not off any wait lists, as the 3 months of maternity leave I have should be long enough to find a nanny for the interim. It's ridiculous.

AliKay20 · April 2016

I'm going through a "daycare scare." I didn't think much of it before but now that I'm pregnant with plans to go back to work after mat leave, I'm so scared to leave my LO in daycare, even with extensive research.

You hear about things on the media about daycare abuse and whatnot. Today, I searched and searched for what would be a decent daycare in my neighborhood. I came across this one daycare that had raving solid reviews on Yelp, Google, etc.

I then google the name and this shows up: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-Daycare-Worker-Charged-With-Child-Abuse-318383181.html

This kind of stuff happens everywhere I guess and the best thing to do is trust in our good judgment that we are putting our kids in good care; however, I can't shake off this feeling of uneasiness. I was relieved to find a reputable daycare and now my search continues. Maybe I need to reassess and see if I can go back to work after a year. Idk what to do. Best of luck to those in search right now!

kwilliams3402 · April 2016

@AliKay20 - It's definitely scary the stories you hear, and we should all do our research. I will say though, my three siblings and I all went to daycare from 3 months until aging out, attending The Peanut Gallery and KinderCare, and while I was personally one of those kids that didn't enjoy the large crowd of kids at daycare starting around Kindergarten, my siblings and I all survived and were never harmed. So, I'm personally going to do my research and be an observant parent, but just want to encourage others to take the bad stories you hear for what they are--isolated incidents and not the norm.

amccul20 · April 2016

I'd start looking, but don't get scared, there are options out there! I told my son's daycare that baby #2 was coming at the end of the first trimester.

Ask around on facebook too to see if any friends have recommendations.

charmedlifex3 · April 2016

We found our daycare through the state registry of registered day cares. We started looking (but not interviewing) when we started TTC. We nabbed the only available spot in our top choice back in Feb. (yes, I'm a crazy person.)

One thing I found when we were interviewing with day cares was a lot of them we had to do the math out for them. We'd ask if they would have any spots available, and the answer would be no. Then we would say "So no children are aging out between Oct and December?" and two out of the five we looked at thought for a minute and said "Oh yeah!"

Also, (and I know this is obnoxious to the day care workers) but we got the best feel for the place if we showed up when kids were being picked up. Usually we tried to schedule it for 5:30, (most of them close at 6) and we ended up waiting 15 - 20 minutes while the center workers finished up. We got a good feel for the workers interactions with the kids and parents.

@alikay20 One of the things I liked about the center we picked was there was definitely check and balances. There is a floating teacher who helps out in all the rooms, there are web cams on a password protected site paranoid parents can log into and look at the kids, and every day the parents get a run down on what their child did. If there is a bump, bruise or bite, the center makes sure to note where and how it was acquired, and there is a strict "three bites you're out" rule for the kiddos. Are these completely fail safe? Nope. But I feel much better about it than some of the home centers we looked at, at least for a baby who can't TELL us when something is wrong.

One other thing my supervisor (with a child in daycare) suggested is that we make a habit to drop by sometimes, while our kiddo is in care (lunch breaks or what have you.) A friend who runs a large center said if the center allows this, it's a good sign they are on the up and up.

AliKay20 · April 2016

Thank you @kwilliams3402 @amccul20 @Allisun85 !!

Seriously all your tips are already calming me down. I called one of the Bright Horizons today in DC and they said right now, I'd be on the waitlist for a year. Still going to the open house they offer this week and I'm going to observe all those that you mentioned. Thanks again!!

mmclark10 · April 2016

@alisun85 That bite policy would make me nervous! Our DS turned out to be a biter (along with many others in his class) and we would have been out after just a few weeks, along with a number of other students based on him getting bites also. He grew out of it after a month or two and hasn't had any incidents (FX!) for a long time. It was one of the most surprising things for me to deal with as a parent so far because he never did it at home. Hard to work on correcting behavior you don't experience yourself!

charmedlifex3 · April 2016

@mmclark10 We have a back up plan. My parents are local & retired, so if he gets to two bites, we'll pull him from day care for a while until we can successfully correct it or he out grows it. DH's sister was a biter until she was school age, so we're aware it can be an issue. But since he WASN'T a biter, he also knows how difficult it was to be the one *getting* bit.

I think the center does that because if one kid is a biter, other children tend to pick up the behavior, and it can escalate quickly to where you have a whole class nomming on each other.

Also something to keep in mind when looking at places - do they have rules you can't live with? Biting is anathema at our center, but they are willing to cloth diaper for us. You can't bring toys from home (except a special lovey) other centers had no issues with it, as long as we didn't expect them to be liable for our toy. One place provided formula and disposable diapers - but wasn't willing to CD, and was hesitant about breast milk.

jaceru · April 2016

I am currently look in the Philadelphia Main Line area and found it really variable. Some places have empty spots for November while the place I called today has a waitlist until June 2017. So far we have found two that we like with a waitlist (but availability when we need it) that are on the relatively more affordable end. But even then its still 300-400 a week.

ramoseecology · April 2016

Well at least I'm not the only one. I started touring in mid-February and applying but it's been dragged out since I've already hit my top places. I have a list of registered places and am getting recommendation but each place only takes about 8 infants at most and several are referencing that moms with kids already there are having another baby in the Fall so although there may be spots opening up it will go to them and those already on the wait lists.

Honestly they are all about $300/week and I'd even be willing to go above that if they could get a spot open for me. I had scoped out prices at least 4 years ago and been saving to make sure we could afford it for awhile. I knew there were wait lists and it would be expensive but I didn't think I would contact almost every center in town (6) and all would say the wait is 1-2 years. I was naive enough to think I would be able to get in at one of them (didn't realize they had so few infants due to caregiver ratios) and wouldn't need to now start sorting through family daycare options and hoping to find something quality. Finding good childcare is now my biggest stress.

Pepper6 · April 2016

@AliKay20 DD goes to BH and we love it! I'm sure every location is a bit different, but overall, their policies and process is really comforting and I've never felt like she's received less than stellar care in the 18 months she's been there.

Also, I have absolutely zero idea how common this is, but our original plan for daycare was my MIL. I went back to work when DD was 3 months old and MIL was able to watch her for a month before she hurt her back and couldn't do it anymore. We were literally scrambling to find daycare over a few day period because we had never looked into it before. Surprisingly, every place we called had immediate openings in their infant rooms for a 4 month old. I think 'wait lists' are so long because people put their names on multiple places and once they actually choose a place, it opens up a lot of options. Obviously, I wouldn't wait until you are literally going back to work to find daycare, but it helps to know that they aren't actually as long as they say they are.

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