{"id":3496,"date":"2010-01-07T11:02:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T16:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2010-01-07T11:02:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T16:02:26","slug":"on-daycare-yet-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/07\/on-daycare-yet-again\/","title":{"rendered":"On daycare, yet again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>t’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care, hasn’t it? I think we’re loooong overdue!<\/p>\n

The reason it’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care is because I’ve been so happy with the young nanny who has been coming to the house since I went back to work after my maternity leave ended last January. After a horrendous search<\/a>, we found a gem and we’ve been thrilled with her care. And we will be thrilled with her care, right up until she leaves on March 1 to start her own maternity leave. Sigh.<\/p>\n

When she came back after the summer off, she told us she was pregnant and I steeled myself for another demoralizing foray<\/a> into the search for affordable, accessible, quality child care. In late September, I started haunting the online child care ads, and whimpered in dismay. And then, early in October I think it was, I mentioned our situation to one of the other moms from Simon’s kindergarten class that I’d befriended. I told her about the nanny’s (relatively) imminent departure, and asked her to keep her ears open for me. To my surprise and delight, she called me up the next week and wondered if I’d be interested in having *her* take care of the boys, and I couldn’t say yes fast enough. She has three kids, too, almost the same ages as my boys at the same school, and all the kids are friends. It’s perfect! I swear, it’s like karmic payback for all the daycare shit <\/a>I’ve had to wade <\/a>through over the years. Not only the easiest daycare search ever, but with optimal results. I couldn’t be more happy. It’s only an interim solution, as she doesn’t want to keep doing daycare beyond this spring, but it gives us a perfect bridge over the gap in care this year.<\/p>\n

So she can bridge the period between the nanny’s maternity leave and the end of Beloved’s semester, and Beloved will be off from May through August with the boys. In September, Simon will be in Grade 1 (!!!!) and Tristan will be in Grade 3, which leaves me finding full-time care for Lucas and before and after school care for the big boys. Should be easy-peasy, right? Not so much.<\/p>\n

A part of me is dismayed to be looking in January for care that isn’t required until September, but I’ve been at this game long enough to know there is no such thing as too soon. I’ve been tossing around different options. I could put Lucas into the day care centre near our house for $40 a day, assuming we creep to the top of that waiting list — I’ve been told it’s even odds since he’s been registered since 2007. Yes, he was born in 2008. Hell, they just called me this year to tell me that Tristan has not yet made it to the top of their waiting list — that he’s been on since 2004 — but since he turns eight in March, he’s no longer eligible for their centre.<\/p>\n

If I get a spot for Lucas at the daycare centre — and a big “if” it is — I’d still have to arrange for before and after school care for the big boys. I’ve had them registered on the wait list for their school’s before and after care program since 2006. I just checked yesterday and while the coordinator won’t know for sure until March, she said it doesn’t look good for this year but we’re likely to get a spot for September 2011. Can you believe it? I registered when Tristan was in JK, and we’ll likely get a spot as he goes into Grade 4. And I’m not sure, but I think he’s ineligible after Grade 5.<\/p>\n

And setting aside the whole wait list thing, there’s the cost issue to consider. The daycare centre is $40 a day, and the school’s before and after program is $19 per day per child. That’s $80 per day for “institutional” care. If I go private, in-home daycare, rates are similar. On the other hand, I can get a live-out nanny for $80 – 100 per day plus payroll taxes. This is good in that I am the boss and therefore in control of the conditions of employment — the reason I was drawn to nanny care in the first place. Currently, I’m only paying for 4 days per week of care because I’m off on Wednesdays, and we lay the nanny off each summer so she can collect EI and we don’t have to pay a fee to “save” a spot or coordinate holidays with the daycare provider and potentially all the other families for which she provides care. On the other hand, Lucas is painfully shy and I’m thinking it might be good for him to get out of the house for care, and it would be really nice to have everyone out of my house during the day. But finding a daycare provider that has space for all three boy who is in our school cachement area — let alone who is a good person and someone worthy <\/a>of caring for my boys! — is a Herculean task that I am dreading to my bones. And the idea of going through the nanny interview process all over again<\/a> gives me a stomach ache.<\/p>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n

It’s kind of disappointing to see that even though two of the three boys will be in school full time in September, we stand to gain absolutely no financial break on daycare fees, and will be spared exactly none of the headaches of finding and managing child care. But, of course, we lose the $100-a-month<\/a> child care payment from the government for Simon when he turns six next month.<\/p>\n

Seriously, how the hell do people with less resources than our privileged family make this work?
\n
\nEditorial Aside<\/strong>: Every link in this post is a link back to a different spot in the ongoing saga of one family’s search for affordable, quality, accessible day care. If you want to read more, you can peruse my “working and mothering<\/a>” category. I’m sure my experience is just about average to what any Canadian family must endure, and I’m horrified by that. The system is broken, and we MUST fix it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care, hasn’t it? I think we’re loooong overdue! The reason it’s been a good long time since I’ve bitched about child care is because I’ve been so happy with the young nanny who has been coming to the house since I went back to … Continue reading “On daycare, yet again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-working-and-mothering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3500,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}