Day Care Question

So I am currently looking for a day care for my daughter when I start back to work in August but the numbers just are not making any sense.

They all seem to close from between 5:00 and 6:00. Most of them close closer to 5:00. On a regular day I work from 9:00 - 5:00 and that’s when I eat at my desk and work through my lunch. It takes me 1/2 hour to get home by transit, then I need to get to the day care. So lets say I drop off the kid at 8:00 I will be picking her up close to 6:00. This seems to me like a standard work schedule but I have had a day care tell me that, that long of a day is overtime, and extra charges, and hard on the kid.

How do you work it out with day care. How do people who can’t work through lunch do it? Driving would take about the same lenght of time as transit so that wont cut any time off the day. I really have no idea how to go about this.

One reason so many women start working part time after having a child.

But around here, some day cares specialize in being open long hours, a couple are even open 24 hours, for women who work the night shift. Just keep calling and asking around.

It’s been eons since I used a day care, but the two I used were both open till 6. Have you looked for a center closer to your work?

I think a common way to handle this is for the parents to work different schedules, with the “late” one doing dropoff and the “early” one doing pickup. That said, my son’s daycare is open 7:00-6:00.

Are you looking at centers, or home-based daycare, or both? A center shouldn’t have to have staff on overtime - they work overlapping schedules.

Both my husband and I work downtown so a daycare close to work would be really expensive. Add to that the cost of driving and parking downtown and I might as well not work.

I have been mainly talking to day homes, but I have inquired to day care centres. The day home people are the only ones that have gotten back to me.

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I think a common way to handle this is for the parents to work different schedules, with the “late” one doing dropoff and the “early” one doing pickup. That said, my son’s daycare is open 7:00-6:00. /QUOTE]

We might have to try that but my husbands schedule is not standard. It can be all over the map.

Most people around here don’t even get off work until 5 or 5:30, so I don’t see how a daycare that closed at 5 would even stay open. You might want to double check those closing times.

And yup, by the time you’re on your second child, you will see that a lot of times, it just doesn’t make sense for both parents to work, considering how spendy daycare is. It’s a good reason for birth control for me in particular.

I have not used daycare in a while but mine was open 6-6. If you can find someone private they may be able to wait till you get there. I have even hired someone to pick up my kids at daycare when I worked 7-7. With all the 12 hour shifts I don’t know what single parents do?

Maybe post something at the daycare and see if another mother might take your child for an hour?

We use Kindercare–they are open 6:30 am to 6:30 pm (my work hours are 7-5). She is school-aged and they offer drop-off and pick-up from school, which is a God-send. KC was the ONLY place I found that accomodated my work hours.

My mother-in-law runs a licensed day care from her house, and although she doesn’t advertise the fact, she will keep a child past closing time (until roughly 6:30.) If it’s habitual, she charges a bit more per week. I’d say it’s worthwhile to at least ask–particularly if you’re willing to pay.

You may want to try to find a referral for private home based care. They are usually much more flexible and the kids get more attention. I used such a place with both my children until they were old enough for pre K. I have never heard a day care closing at 5. I don’t know how they could make money. UNLESS, they are actually a nursery school that aren’t for working families but more for educating and socializing the kids while Mom or Dad gets housework and shopping done.

So there really are places where people work 9 to 5, then. Most people I know work 8 to 4.

I second looking into home childcare. Not only are they much more flexible with pick up times, at least based on the 7 providers I used to visit for a literacy program, they are often cheaper as well.

I am a father and this issue was a real bitch when the girls were younger and still is to some extent. I did the nightly pickups and had to walk out the door at 5 pm sharp no matter who or what was standing in my way. Their day care providers had strict closing hours as early as 5:30 and I usually made it with about 90 seconds to spare literally. I have a GPS with an estimated time of arrival and I sometimes had to speed or take risky shortcuts if there was traffic.

I got royally bitched out once by our day care provider for the one of two times I was late in 6 years and that was only by 7 minutes because I got stopped by the police. She isn’t a nice person deep down.

Being a working parent is especially hard under those circumstances and I don’t know of a good way around it unless you can get a nanny. We had serious work problems right before I had to leave a couple of times and they told me I had to make other arrangements for someone to pick up the kids or my job would be in jeopardy. There was literally no one else that could possibly get them within a reasonable time so I just walked out right past them and dealt with the consequences the next day and on my review but made no apologies. That is just the many of us have to deal with it if you live a good distance away from work and don’t have family really close and available to the kids.

Try working 12 hour shifts–there is no day care (in a day care center environment) around here that would take kids from 0600 to 8pm. Most day shifts for nurses are 0700am-0730pm. I dropped to 2 days a week, put my youngest in home day care until 3pm and had my inlaws pick him up for the 3-8 bit. They took him to our house where the 2 older ones were off the school bus shortly thereafter. Usually, my husband got home around 630 pm or so.

It wasn’t ideal, but it worked because it was only 2 days/week. I confess that I found the process overwhelming. Home daycare can be a boon and a blessing, but you must be choosy and you must check references and trust your gut. If Baby doesn’t seem to warm up to Caregiver–find another provider, as hard as that might be.

Don’t mean to bring you down, but really, look long and hard. Good luck.

We are meeting with one option tomorrow. It is a day home and the hours seem a bit more reasonable. The only thing that strikes me as odd is that she responded to my e-mails within minutes of me sending them. No matter what time of day it was. I guess I just think that if you are looking after kids, why are you on your computer all the time… That could just be me overthinking things though. I will find out tomorrow.

No, that is not overthinking things. That’s the sort of stuff you should be noticing! AND CALL THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO USE HER AND THE REFERENCES SHE PROVIDES.

It’s probably best if you put together a list of questions (because you will forget to ask some stuff) ahead of time. Look online for sample questions (I faced this issue prior to the internet).

Good luck!

We also used a Kindercare which was open 6:30 to 6:30. It wasn’t cheap (and we had two in the infant room at the same time) but it gave us a lot of flexibility in our schedules. We also did the early/late thing. I’d go to work early, he’d drop the kids off around 8:00 and get to work at 9 - I’d get off at 4 and pick up the kids, he’d work until 6 or 7.

This is what we’re doing now, only I’m dropping off and the husband is doing the picking up and we’re using a Montessori. Ours is open 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fortunately, our son’s preschool is in the same building as our daughter’s daycare, or we would be really ready to tear our hair out.

My daughter uses a daycare about 3/4 mile from where she lives (they used to live literally right around the corner, but have moved) and she has fairly flexible work hours. So she drops the kid off at 9 and gets to work about 9:45, staying till 6 or 6:30 and her husband leaves his Hoboken office at 5 and gets there nearly at 6. A few weeks ago, his PATH train failed to open its doors in Manhattan and just went right back to NJ. He was terrified that he wouldn’t make it, but just did. I don’t what the daycare would have done. They have to have some provision for these situations. He couldn’t even call because there is no cell phone service in NY subways. But the daycare is wonderful (if extremely expensive).

They do. In Minnesota there were several times when my kids were in daycare where we had blizzard conditions - parents spent three and four hours on the road. They just settle the kids in with a movie and a snack until the parents get there.

Under those sorts of conditions, our Kindercare didn’t even charge. They just knew it was going to be a late night for some of the kids.