Category: Working and mothering

Discuss: $100/day is too much to pay for a live-out nanny. She is young but has her ECE.

It sucks. Thanks for asking.

Since the end of August I’ve posted at least a dozen ads in various online and IRL places. I’ve talked to or e-mailed probably 20 people. I’ve invited three people to come to our house for an interview, and two of them didn’t even bother to show up. No call, no e-mail no apology, just me sitting there explaining to the kids that I don’t know where the babysitter is or why she didn’t come, and yes as a matter of fact it IS extremely rude to just not show up when you’ve been invited somewhere, interview or not. And the one person who did actually show up called us the next day to say sorry, she’s decided to go back to school in January, but she’d be happy to sit occasionally on weekends for us.

Two and a half months down, and no leads whatsoever.

Am thinking of moving beyond the free online classifieds that have worked for me thus far and beyond the notice pasted on the community board at the supermarket. Would you pay $70 to have access to an online database of nannies? Any other thoughts on how I can broaden my search?

Anybody got Mary Poppins’ number?

Sigh. I should have known it was too good to be true. When I first started looking for a new nanny for the boys back in September, the first two people to reply were so awesome that I danced for two days. One was an ECE grad, one had a little daughter but tonnes of nanny experience. I was delighted that I’d have to choose between two fantastic candidates.

The ECE grad bailed the day of our first interview, saying she was sick. No problem. Then she missed the second one, claiming she thought it was the following week. Then she stood me up last night. The second one disappeared, too. One e-mail she was very interested, and I haven’t heard from her since.

(insert colourful curse words here)

So now I’m back to scouring the ads, placing ads of my own, sifting through the reams of applicants who I wouldn’t trust to take care of my garden let alone my kids, and hoping against hope that we get lucky again. It’s the most helpless, frustrating feeling.

You know, I really think this goddamn childcare search is the hardest, most painful part of parenting. I’d happily endure another 24 hours of labour if it meant I could be guaranteed a decent, caring, reliable person to care for my boys. So much for looking forward to going back to work.

I’d’ve loved to have our old nanny back, but she’s eight months pregnant with baby #2 for her, and I just can’t see her taking on my three boys plus her own two year old plus a newborn. You couldn’t pay me enough to do it, anyway!

Oh, and to add insult to injury… remember the woman who took care of the boys for two days and quit with no notice by dropping a judgmental letter in my mailbox in the middle of the night? Guess whose daughter is in Simon’s JK class? I get to see her twice a day, every day. I tell ya, the fun never stops around here.

Around the time the boys started school in September, I started truly panicking about the idea of going back to work. It was still five months away, but I knew back-to-school season was only a quick hop to Halloween, which would start the slippery slide down to Christmas and before I knew it, February would be upon us and I’d be back at work. I was so upset about it I cried with dread when I thought about it, barely half way through my maternity leave.

I love being home with the boys. I love the chaos, I love the routine. I love picking the boys up from school. I love arguing Lucas into his four or five daily naps. I love the minutiae of daily errands in the afternoons. I love having the flexibility to know that if the laundry or the groceries don’t get done today, I’ll get to them tomorrow. Or the next day. I love preparing lunches and dinners during daylight hours. I love the feeling of killing time, of having time to kill, even if I have to kill it pacifying a fussy baby or playing endless rounds of Uno and Trouble and Wiggles Memory Game. Even when it all drives me bugshit and I’m sure I’ll lose my mind if I have to load and unload the dishwasher one more time, I still love it.

When I started thinking about it, I realized I’ve been home with the boys almost three of the past six and a half years; basically, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom half of my parenting career. It’s a hell of a hard job, but I can honestly say it’s not nearly as difficult as trying to balance a home life with a full-time day job. I know I’m out on a limb here, but I truly believe that it’s way, way harder to be working outside the home than it is to stay home full time – especially with small children at home. Being home has it’s own set of challenges, but I was sick to my stomach trying to imagine how I’d balance the mother I wanted to be, the wife I wanted to be, and the employee I knew I would be expected to be. I couldn’t reconcile them all into a single person; there just wasn’t enough to go around.

That’s why I approached my wonderful boss, who happens to also be a wonderful friend, and proposed that in February I’d return to work part-time, working four days a week instead of five. She was on board, and her boss seems to be on board, too. I checked out the ramifications (the biggest of which is the drop in salary) and figured we could make it work.

It actually took me a couple of weeks to believe it could be possible, that it could really happen. I still feel giddy about it, like I’ve won the lottery. I’ll be able to work four days, but stay home for three days. There will be one day a week I can still hang out with the other moms at the kindergarten door, waiting for the JKs to come spilling out. There will be one day every week when I don’t have to rush out the door to catch a 6:25 am bus, so I can have breakfast with the boys. There will be one day a week where Lucas and I have a few precious hours with just the two of us, so I can continue to baby him. There will be one more day when my day with the boys doesn’t begin in a mad rush to get dinner ready, with bedtime shortly behind.

Working part-time has been something I’ve been coveting since I first went back to work after my mat leave with Tristan, way back in 2003. It didn’t seem like we’d ever be able to make it work financially, and then it didn’t seem like my workplace would ever consider it. But, with fingers crossed and breath bated, the cosmic tumblers might have finally aligned in my favour on this one.

Now, when I think of going back to work, my heart is light. Instantly, I stopped dreading it and started looking forward to it. I miss my old colleagues, and there is something validating about being a respected professional. I even love the work I do. And now, like a gift, I’ll be able to have the best of both worlds. I can’t believe how lucky I am.

I was really excited about attending a bar camp event to discuss government and social media, something you might remember I was specializing in back in my other life before Lucas came along. I’d even managed to get Beloved to take the afternoon off work and take care of the boys so I could attend.

I’d been looking forward to it for weeks, and thought it would be an excellent opportunity to not only stay current in my field, but to make some good contacts, too. After all, this blissful interruption of my regular life otherwise known as maternity leave will end in February.

I wore make-up! And my shiny shoes with the kitten heels. My home-with-the-boys shoes never go click-click-click when I walk.

They were discussing some pretty cool stuff – current practices, common hurdles, governance issues. All of it very relevant to what I was doing before February, fascinating to me personally, and all of it in a very open, informal, engaging discussion. There was a great presentation on how one department was using wikis, and for the first time I really *get* why people use them.

And you know what? I totally flaked out and left after two hours. Matter of fact, I kind of left in the middle of a conversation with one of my colleagues during the coffee break. I’d gone down to get a bottle of water and some cash from the ATM to pay for parking (one thing I don’t miss — driving and paying for parking downtown. Yikes!) and when I got outside, I just kept walking. I realized that interesting though the presentation was, I’d simply rather be at home. The job will still be there in five months waiting for me, and the social media universe will have evolved again. I can make and remake all my contacts then.

February is not going to be pretty.

I’ve been following a story in the media here about an unlicensed child care provider who has been arrested and charged with forcible confinement and obstructing police. The story was first published yesterday, with details of how the parents of 11 children, ages one to four, were called to come and pick up their children at the care provider’s home after police and paramedics raided the home following complaints by two sets of parents. I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like for those parents to get that call out of the blue in the middle of the day… “Come and pick up your kids, the police and paramedics have shut down your daycare.”

Today, the follow-up story said that four of the youngest children, all under the age of two, were “forcibly confined” in a playpen in the furnace room of the home during the day.

I’m chilled by this story because it could have so easily been me, been my kids. The article quoted one parent as saying “he had not seen the place where the children stayed during the day, and never thought to ask because he had known [the daycare provider] for the past 10 years and trusted her.” A part of me wants to rail against the parents for not being more diligent, but who am I kidding? I had only the vaguest idea of what was going on with the kids during the day when they were in home care, and almost all of that came from what they told me. Sure, when we first signed up with a care provided, I asked to see the places where the kids would eat and sleep and play, but after those first couple of meetings, the furthest I usually went into the house was the front hallway to help put on or take off boots and coats. When I think about the amount of trust that is built into a daycare relationship, and the very few checks and balances we put into the system, it makes me a little bit queasy.

Even though I’ve been researching (and ranting on) daycare issues for a while now, there were issues that these articles have clarified for me. In Ontario, an unlicensed care provider can provide care to a maximum of five children under 10 years of age and unrelated to her, regardless of how many caregivers are present. I always thought that if there was another adult present, the caregiver was allowed to take on more kids, but apparently that’s not the case. The fines are significant, too, topping out at $2000 per day. I can think of two or three caregivers I know personally in the neighbourhood who might want to take note of this… although it would take an unsatisfied parent or disgruntled neighbour reporting them to the authorities to set any kind of fine in motion, because there doesn’t seem to be any kind of infrastructure for the review of unlicenced care in Ontario.

A related article in today’s Citizen also noted that “according to the City of Ottawa, there are 17,247 spots available at licensed child care facilities within the city — but there are 12,000 children on the waiting list.” Another stat extrapolates to the province as a whole: “For the 1.919 million Ontario children under the age of 12, there were only 229,875 licensed child care spots.”

What this means to me as a parent is that I’m over the barrel when it comes to child care. It’s a sellers’ market for child care, and now that I’m lucky enough to have someone I trust with the boys, I’m terrified to do anything to jeopardize that relationship. I’m honouring our initial contract with our nanny through May, even though I’ll be home with the boys starting in January. No doubt, it will be great to have an extra set of hands to help with the new baby for those first bleary couple of weeks, but I’m thinking it’s going to get pretty redundant after a month or so when the extra $350 a week would come in really handy. But, I don’t want to rock the childcare boat lest I find myself scrambling – again. And that’s a slippery slope indeed, and exactly how parents develop the kind of willful obliviousness that lets an extreme situation like the one in those articles happen.

Back in the day, when I first started looking into child care for Tristan, I actually had a preference for unlicensed care because of the flexibility it offered. Now, my first preference is for licensed care, and when The Player to be Named Later is born, I’ll put all three boys back into the system on waiting lists for licensed, in-home care. It didn’t work out for us last time, but maybe with a year’s lead time, we’ll get lucky. In an ideal world, our sweet nanny will still be available… but I can’t afford to bet on it. In the end, it’s not like my preferences matter anyway, because in a market like this, sometimes you just have to take whatever you can get… and that’s a sad and scary thought.

Tristan’s on his third day of senior kindergarten, and I’m only now getting around to memorializing it on the blog. I didn’t even go… I sat here in my office and watched the clock tick and imagined the nanny walking the boys over there, then pictured him in his new classroom with his new teacher for two and a half hours. At least Beloved was off early enough to pick him up. Ah, mommy guilt, will you never leave me in peace?

The good news is, he loves school now more than ever, even though his dearest chum from last year is now in a different class. I’m reserving my opinion on the new teacher to see if we make it past last year’s 8-day milestone before the first parental conference, but it’s looking promising (touch wood) so far.

Speaking of kindergarten, there was an article in the Ottawa Citizen this morning about a local woman who chose to keep her four-year old daughter in daycare full time rather than send her to junior kindergarten because she couldn’t get into the on-site before- and after-school care program at her daughter’s school. The article notes:

The kindergarten programs in the English school boards in the city are only 150 minutes per day, and trying to tease together day care arrangements for such young children can be a logistical nightmare for working parents and disjointed for their young children. So more and more are choosing the O’Brien option — pulling the plug on junior kindergarten altogether and keeping their school-aged children in their regular day care for another year.

I’m now so jaded to the whole daycare thing that my first response to this article was, “Yeah. And?” I mean, I’m happy to see anybody shedding light on the ridiculous hoops working parents have to leap through as we navigate an increasingly ludicrous daycare system. But honestly, it would have never occurred to me to actually keep the boys home from school, no matter how high-quality the day care. The responsibility of getting Tristan to and from school was just another in the long list of conditions we set on any potential caregiver.

What I wish the article had mentioned was that even if you do manage to find a caregiver (licenced or not) who will shuttle your kindergarten student to and from his or her 150 minutes of school per day, you’re still paying full price for that day’s care. Rightly so, of course, because the caregiver can’t fill that spot while your child is away, and the afternoon senior kindergarten from 1:00 to 3:30 really is smack dab in the middle of the day.

But even if you’re willing to pay a full day of fees for what may be just a half a day of care, depending on the child’s schedule, it’s still the least of your problems. You’ve got to find someone in your school district, and someone actually willing to escort your child back and forth. Most likely, the caregiver has to bring the rest of the entourage with her for every drop-off and pick-up, despite the weather. No wonder caregivers are reluctant to take on kindergarten students.

The article also notes that less than half of the English-language schools in our boards (we have two, Catholic and public, and then another two French boards) have daycare centres. I wonder how they categorize our school, which has before- and after-school care — starting at age 6 and up. Even if I wanted Tristan in before- and after-school care, it’s not an option. And you know what? I’ve got both boys on a waiting list for when it does become an option for us… in 2010. And given the fact that the article says almost one thousand students currently remain on a waiting list for on-site before- and after-school care as of right now, I’m not banking on that as a guarantee even when Simon and Tristan are both over six years old. (To say nothing of the player to be named later.)

The article ends with this “what can you do” shrug:

This leaves parents in the same predicament as Ms. O’Brien and her husband — wanting to send their children off to junior kindergarten this week, but finding it has become an unrealistic option. In their case, they’re just happy their school-age daughter has a spot in such a great day-care centre.

Based on the neighbourhoods, schools and daycare centre described in the article, I can guess that the family in question are likely fairly well off, relatively speaking. The article also mentions many families choosing Montesorri over public kindergarten, which is quite expensive and STILL requires some extra before and after school care, at an added cost.

I know that we were quite lucky in that money wasn’t a huge obstacle for us in finding adequate care, but we did have to more than double our monthly daycare costs to accomodate both the nanny and Simon’s nursery school fees.

What about the families that don’t have the luxury of throwing money at the problem?

It’s just another example of how wretchedly the daycare ‘system’ (such as it is) in Canada is broken.

So, it’s the nanny’s third day today, and she didn’t quit yet. I’m so happy! (Amazing how my standards have dropped, isn’t it?)

Seriously, though, even beyond her not quitting, I’m thrilled with the new nanny. The boys ask every day whether Jen and Jordan (her one year old son) are coming today. She brings them to the park; she plays games with them; last Friday, she brought them to her house for the afternoon and they did fingerpainting and came home with home-made, car-shaped cookies. She’s got Simon on the potty a couple of times a day. She even emptied the clean dishwasher so she could put the lunch dishes in it. Really, I love her!

I’m not the only one who loves her. Friday night at dinnertime, Tristan had just finished telling us all the fun things they did with Jen that day. He asked if she would be coming back the next day, but I told him that Mummy and Daddy don’t have to work on Saturdays or Sundays, so we’d get to spend the whole day together as a family. “And besides,” I teased him, “would you rather spend the day with us or with Jen?”

He didn’t hesitate nearly long enough before answering, “Jen!” In other circumstances, I might have been peeved, but frankly by this point, I’m happy with that answer.

It’s still a little awkward having her in our house, though. We’re making up rules as we go along, because I hadn’t really thought any of this through. I don’t know if I should leave a list of suggested lunches for the boys, based on that week’s trip to the grocery store, or just let her root through the cupboards and make it up based on what she finds. I’m also not sure whether I should be buying stuff for her to make lunch for herself.

I was also thinking about leaving suggestions for activities, and leaving her our family membership card for the Farm and the Science museum. If it were me, we’d be going to the library, and playgroups, to parks in other neighbourhoods – anything to burn daylight! – but I don’t want to overwhelm her. I’m not sure I’d want to be doing a lot of field trips by myself with a 1, 3 and 5 year old!

So, day three and all is well on the daycare front. It’s going to nearly break us financially (her pay is barely $100 less a week than Beloved earns) but at least for the next year I’m willing to pay that price. Do you think this is finally the good karma I’ve earned after more than half a year of dreadful experiences?

A quick editorial aside comes to mind as I’m writing this post. When I refer back to old posts (which, I am noticing, I am quite fond of doing) should I be linking to the original posts back on Blogger or the ones in the archive here? The original ones have the comments. What do you think?

What’s that, you say? You’re dying for another long, rambly post to update you on the endless saga of our search for quality, affordable child care? Far be it from me to deny you the joy of a post like that.

So. Last time you saw our heroine, she had recently had the rug yanked out from under her by the judgemental and unprofessional caregiver who quit by leaving a note in the mailbox after a mere 14 hours with Tristan and Simon, and she had recommenced the time-consuming and exhausting search for child care. (I’m switching back to first person now. The third-person thing was getting rather tedious.)

In the past two and a half weeks (good gravy, has it only been 2.5 weeks?) I’ve posted four new online classifieds and answered more than twenty of them myself. I’ve called daycare centres and home-care agencies. I’ve called phone numbers from posters taped to the mailbox and the community bulletin board at the grocery store. I’ve handed my business card out to strangers I’ve stopped in the park and at Tristan’s school, after sidling casually up to them and engaging them in conversations that usually go something like, “Hey, great weather we’re having, eh? So, do you know any child care providers with open spaces for a 3 and 5 year old?”

I’ve asked other mothers at my bus stop, asked neighbours over the back fence, and even had an old friend that I ran into in the grocery store – who happens to run her own home daycare – asking around for me. For a relatively shy person, I’ve walked up to a whole hell of a lot of strangers and started talking to them. I have, in short, been working the hell out of the surprisingly solid network of parents, friends, childcare providers and strangers.

Much as I’ve tried to shield them from the conversations going on, the boys are aware that Joanne won’t be their caregiver anymore and neither will Bobbie. Tristan has taken to evaluating every adult as a potential caregiver, and has broken my heart a few times by pulling me aside and whispering, “Can {so and so} be our new caregiver?” He has shown a preference for people with swimming pools, extensive toy collections, and other 5 and 6 year old boys with whom he can play.

We’ve decided to try something new this time around. We’re going with – as I have alluded to recently – a live-out nanny. We interviewed someone last week, and although I really liked her, what we could afford was less than what she was hoping to make. I made her an offer last week, and she came back with a counteroffer a few days ago. After much soul-searching and wringing of hands, I told her we simply couldn’t afford that much, and she came back with a reduced counteroffer, and I simply couldn’t say no again. She hasn’t gotten back to me since I accepted her counteroffer, but I’m starting to relax into the idea that it will all work out.

We’re going to be paying her $382.50 a week, which is more than $100 more a week (ouch!) than we are currently paying. BUT, she has a car and is willing to shuttle Simon back and forth to nursery school three days a week while juggling the same-time pick-up and drop-off of Tristan. It’s a hassle, but gives her three days a week with a two-hour midafternoon break. She has a 9 month-old son of her own, and he’s the sweetest, gurgliest, chubbiest 9 month-old I’ve seen since mine were that age.

Having a nanny is a whole new frontier in paperwork, though. She’s considered an employee and I’m the employer, so I have to register a payroll account and deduct and remit the payroll taxes and workers’ comp premiums and all that stuff. Gah! Good thing I at least know a little bit about this stuff from all the years I worked in the tax centre.

If any of you have any experience or advice about the legalities of hiring a live-out nanny (or “domestic worker” in government parlance) I’d appreciate your insight. I’m drawing up a contract that covers vacation time, stat days, sick time, working hours and the usual. And no, the irony has not escaped me that back in February I balked at half this stuff when looking for a child care provider and now I’m offering more benefits AND more money than I refused back then. But at least she is my employee now and that gives me some control over the conditions of employment – which means at the very least that she can’t take on extra kids without involving me in the decision. I’m a little weirded out by her being in my house with my kids when I’m not there – and potentially when I am, most of all. A new adventure for all of us, I guess.

And the money. Oy. In Canada, you can deduct $7000 per child (younger than 7) against your income for tax purposes. Her annual salary will be just shy of $20K, which is $6K MORE than the annual child care deduction limit – and that’s not even considering the $155 a month for Simon’s nursery school “tuition.” Not to mention the fact that it’s damn near 2/3 of Beloved’s annual salary last year.

We’ve decided to suck it up for this year. It will be tight, but my heart was so set on this nursery school for Simon and I am frankly feeling so burned by the whole child care search that if we have to make due on a tight budget for a year we can. A little over a year from now, Tristan will be in school full time and Simon will start morning JK at public school and we can re-evaluate everything then. And of course, our lives could be changing considerably this February – but I’m not counting any of those chickens just yet.

Stay tuned – you know there’s more to come.

I just spent 30 minutes transcribing the infamous letter, delivered surreptitiously under cover of night, to share with you. (No, I haven’t posted it yet. I’m still pondering how wise a decision it is to publish it.) The whole time, I could hear the boys above in their beds, playing and talking and generally avoiding going to sleep.

Tristan finally called down the stairs to me. “Mommy,” he said in his serious voice. “We changed our minds. We want to go back to Bobbie’s house.” The former caregiver, the one who no doubt loved the boys, but with whom I had enough niggling concerns that I launched myself down the road of finding a new caregiver lo these many months ago.

Now I’m really torn. There were valid reasons I wanted to change caregivers. But I’m wondering if maybe my expectations were too high. Should I take the easy road and go back to her? We saw her in the schoolyard today at JK pick-up and she came straight up to me and gave me a hug before talking to the boys. She’s been a part of our lives so long, and just seeing her at the school leaves a lump in my throat… especially now as I dread the inevitable question of how it’s going with the new caregiver. It’s a very small community, and no doubt if I start sending out word that I’m looking for a new caregiver it will really hurt her that we didn’t at least try to approach her to see if she would take us back. Bad enough we rejected her once, but potentially devastating that we didn’t go back to her when it didn’t work out in the very first week… the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt her feelings.

I talked to both boys for a while just now, promising that at the least we would go back to Bobbie’s house for a playdate soon. Simon, who every single day said, “I don’t want to go to Bobbie’s house” said to me tonight, “I miss my buddies. I want to go back, please.”

And I didn’t think my heart could break any more over this wretched, wretched situation.

I spoke to one agency and left a message with another, and the first agency had absolutely no caregivers in our school zone. I posted half a dozen responses to bulletin boards, and have had a brief e-mail conversation with someone who might be interested in sharing her nanny. It seems half the city of Ottawa is now looking out to help us find a caregiver. Could the answer be as simple as what I had just a week ago? Were my expectations too high? Am I considering settling because I’m still reeling from this whole experience? Does a good heart and unadulterated love count for more than lax discipline, too much TV and rowdy kids?

Twice I asked Tristan how he felt about going back, and twice he said he would like a new caregiver. Is he saying he wants to go back to Bobbie because he thinks thats what I want him to say? Or has he really changed his mind?

Could someone please tell me what the right answer is? I’m getting mighty tired of flailing around in the dark on this one.