Should my 13 month old go to to daycare or is it unnatural?

ripple wrote:

...PS I'm not judging anyone for making the opposite choice here -- I'm glad it works for you -- but I'd lay off the moralistic BS. Staying at home is simply not the right choice for everyone.

I strongly agree with this ^.

Neither choice is perfect. Neither choice is terrible. What works for one family does not work for another.

Hi jjjjjjj, does that mean that you took 3 years off work to take care of your first child, then more time for your second, or did you work from home? I'm just curious because I'm still hoping I can work at home part-time and take care of my daughter. But even part-time, I'll need additional help to take care of her.

Also, we do read every day. My wife also sings to her everyday in French, her native language, and we're hoping our daughter will be bilingual. However we are not teachers.

People will make big proclamations on both sides of the issue. But the fact is that in the big washing machine that is life, we do not really know whether things like day care, Ferberizing and other hotly debated early childhood issues really matter that much one way or the other.

If you chose day care, make sure it is something more than a bright and cheery holding cell for kids. Montessori or something that has an eye on childhood development rather than comfortable warehousing is important. If they are showing them videos for half the day and letting them run loose on a playground the other half, you need to find something better.

If you chose to keep them home, same deal. Is the day just videos/ipads and hyperactive play at the playground? Or is there real interaction?

Also, the day care should be willing to tell you whether the crying is an issue (carrying on too long) or whether your kid calms down quickly. If the crying is an issue, then you do need to consider other arrangements. Some kids just cannot deal with day care until they are older.

Montessori? lol

Ben There Dunn That wrote:

ripple wrote:

...PS I'm not judging anyone for making the opposite choice here -- I'm glad it works for you -- but I'd lay off the moralistic BS. Staying at home is simply not the right choice for everyone.

I strongly agree with this ^.

Neither choice is perfect. Neither choice is terrible. What works for one family does not work for another.

exactly

OP, part of being a parent is to seek out info from other parents etc., but you and your spouse can and should make the decision

you need to 1. make more $ if you are going to work or stop working and focus on kid(s)

not to preach but that is your reality now that you are a parent, suck it up and get going

Parent wrote:

Bottom line is that the people who work at the day care don't have your daughter's best interest at heart.

wildly ignorant statement. Why on earth would you think that?

what is unnatural for a parent to ask for parenting advice on an anonymous message board about running.

I really hope you are a troll because its too sad to imagine that you would come here for parenting advice.

answerer of questions wrote:

what is unnatural for a parent to ask for parenting advice on an anonymous message board about running.

I really hope you are a troll because its too sad to imagine that you would come here for parenting advice.

Not really.

If this was his only method of looking for ideas/perspective then I would agree with you. But for this to be one place to check and see if anyone has anything useful to say is perfectly reasonable.

Therefore, you are wrong.

I agree with PARENT. Why would you think that they do? Most people who work there are minimum wage workers who are just picking up whatever paycheck they can. Turnover is super high b/c people get burned out quickly and just stop caring.

Creeky wrote:

Parent wrote:

Bottom line is that the people who work at the day care don't have your daughter's best interest at heart.

wildly ignorant statement. Why on earth would you think that?

There is a big difference between loving a child like they're your own and having their best interests at heart. And these are not 'minimum wage' earners we're talking about, they are all qualified. By and large the people drawn to this kind of work love kids, in fact why in the world would you choose this vocation otherwise? The idea that any of the carers who have contact with my daughter wouldn't have her best interests at heart is not something that I've even considered. And I'm not trying to say that they love or care got her in the same way that we do as her parents, just that I know and can see that they're trying their best for her and that she's very very happy there

This is no different than when my niece went to college at UT. She bawled her eyes out for two weeks and wanted to come home. After that there was no getting her home, she even stayed in Austin for the summer and end up getting an MBA in 5 years.

I worked at two large franchise day care centers and had a few college classmates work at several others. You can go on deluding yourself, but you are flat out wrong.

Creeky wrote:

There is a big difference between loving a child like they're your own and having their best interests at heart. And these are not 'minimum wage' earners we're talking about, they are all qualified. By and large the people drawn to this kind of work love kids, in fact why in the world would you choose this vocation otherwise? The idea that any of the carers who have contact with my daughter wouldn't have her best interests at heart is not something that I've even considered. And I'm not trying to say that they love or care got her in the same way that we do as her parents, just that I know and can see that they're trying their best for her and that she's very very happy there

Daycare is just school, where kids learn social skills. The idea that they are necessarily better off with parents all the time misses this point, unless the parents are committed to homeschooling them from infancy through high school. Homeschooled kids are at a serious disadvantage, although I like little about our organized schools. Dilemmas abound. We have jobs that have flex time and so we used daycare maybe a third of the time.

Raiser her right wrote:

Children will develop better if you raise them and teach them from home. Read them books, spend time with them. Daycare comparatively stunts their educational growth.

Ha ha ha! That's right! Heed this advice, as the posters on LR are knowledgeable, well-adjusted adults (not trolls) with remarkable emotional intelligence.

Recognizer of Lame Posts wrote:

This ^ is a classic example of incredibly lame logic.

You child WILL adapt. True.

On the other hand, people adapt to getting sold into slavery, being raped, going blind, and watching their friends get their legs blown off in war. As a result anyone can immediately see (well, anyone but good ole flaggy) that the fact that someone WILL adapt has ABSOLUTELY ZERO BEARING on the desirability (or even acceptability) of that which they are adapting to.

Being a child in daycare is in no way comparable to the list of things you presented, so that was ridiculous. I was not overly fond of leaving my one-year-old with strangers which is why we did not do it for long.

While I believe it is better for a young child to spend most of the day with a parent (we made that happen for our kids), studies show that there are pros for a child in daycare too...they learn to become more independent and sure of themselves sooner than those who are with a parent all the time, and they often develop certain social skills sooner.

Daycare is a necessity for a lot of people, and we shouldn't demonize them for doing that.

NY runner dad wrote:

Thanks, Flagpole. We live in an expensive area and we need two incomes. I've managed to work from home with the baby last year and made $45K (just finished my taxes), but now that she's walking, I don't see how I can work as much with her around. My wife works full time at the office and makes $70K/year. She likes her job.

I hate to see my daughter cry at the daycare but having a nanny at home would be more expensive. Also, since I'm working at home most of the time, it wouldn't be easy to share the space with a nanny.

I'll give it another week and see how it goes. If it's the same at the end of the week, I'll reconsider.

You pay $11,440 a year for childcare. Subtracted from your income, that leaves $33,560. So, the question is can you do without $33,560 a year? If not, what about half that ($16,780)? If so, could you be a stay at home Dad and work some part-time jobs (weekends and maybe some evenings) to make $16,780 a year? Can you downsize your life a little? Sell a car, move to a cheaper place?

I'm not really for or against daycare. It works just fine for some people and their kids. I'm more about wanting to find solutions that YOU would want. I maintain that if you REALLY wanted it to happen, that you could be a stay-at-home dad. Down the line then if your wife has an opportunity to get a similarly-paying job in a cheaper area of the country, that would be cool too.

My wife and I were treading water financially for a time when we lived in the DC area, and when we finally decided to move away from there, our financial lives returned to good again.

Anyway, I hope whatever you want works out for you, brother.

Justin Garland wrote:

I worked at two large franchise day care centers and had a few college classmates work at several others. You can go on deluding yourself, but you are flat out wrong.

Well...that depends on where you go. If you live in an affluent area, you often get highly-educated women working at the daycare. My wife worked at a daycare/preschool for a year before she took a college professor job as she was transitioning from being a stay-at-home mom back to a career-path job. At the time, ALL of the women there had at LEAST a Masters Degree in something, and a couple of them had a Ph.D. They did a lot to keep those kids engaged, and the ones over age 2 actually went to French class. They read to those kids all the time...individually and in groups. Pretty good place really.

Are there daycares out there where all the workers do is make sure the kids don't die while there? Yep. But they aren't all like that.

You guys can call in preschool or school all you want but you are just deluding yourselves. Daycare is not that different from when I drop my dog off at the kennel when I go on vacation.

do whatever the fuark you want brah