Amazingly, I got a job, so now I’m looking for childcare for my two little boys. I called around, and I’m going to look at one tomorrow. The cost is $80 per kid per week, but she said she’d give us a discount for two kids. That seems astoundingly low; I’d expected to pay far more than that. (We live in northern Virginia, not far from DC.)
So what do you pay for childcare, and what sort of childcare do you use?
Wow, that’s suspiciously low.
I pay $290 per month per kid, which gets me after-school pickup and karate class three days a week. On the other days they do more traditional activities, and they usually get their homework done.
It’s more during the summer, when they’re there all day. And in the summer, the group does a lot of extra activities, like going to the park and the pool, and bowling, and seeing movies. This is in the middle of California, for what it’s worth.
I have two kids and pay $275 a week. This is at a center, not in-home care.
For licensed in-home care I pay $25 per day, or I can pay by the hour at $5/hour. That is pretty average around here, although my caregiver does not give discounts for a second child and some do, also her rates are the same whether you are part time or full time. She is excellent and could charge more in my opinion. Non-licensed care can be very cheap, like $1.50 - 2.00 / hour but I was not willing to go that route.
When I priced out centers like Kindercare and such, they were far more expensive when you got a per day rate, but about the same if you wanted full time. My child is only in daycare 2 days a week so I only pay $50, but for 2 days at a center it would have cost around $100. Crazy since a full time week would only cost around $130. I think the centers want full-time kids and so price it that way to discourage part timers.
We pay $670 per month for a three year old at the Golden Goose Academy. We are expecting another child in two weeks and that will be $900 a month.
These rates are for three full days a week. The quality of the care is unmatched but the prices are near the middle for this area.
Two kids, one kindergarter, one preschooler, $380 per week. Minnesota. Kindercare.
Home daycare would be cheaper, but I don’t want to take my vacations when my daycare provider does.
This is in northern rural Japan, where the economy is very depressed, and the kid population is falling rapidly.
Younger kid - kindergarten five days a week. That’s about 150 dollars a month including three school meals. Kindy hours are actually 9am - 1.50pm but you can take them from 8:50am for the same price, which I do. Then after hours care till 6pm three days a week is another 60 dollars a month.
Older kid goes to after school daycare three days a week, from 2pmish till 6pm. It costs 35 dollars a month and for that membership fee he could go five days a week plus all school holidays bar a week in August and December/Jan, and three days in May.
So all told, about 240 dollars a month for three days a week, for two kids.
I paid $675/month for one child at the Phoenix School, a private daycare/preschool with several campuses in the greater Sacramento area. Drop off as early as 6:30am, pick up by 6pm. Charlie was only there from 7:30 to 2-2:30ish, though. Same price. We loved this school. If they had an elementary school Charlie would still be going there.
I liked the idea of a daycare/preschool as opposed to home daycare for several reasons. Like Dangerosa said, I didn’t want to schedule my time off around that of my daycare.
Also, at a home daycare where a single person is watching several kids, there is no one to relieve the provider for breaks, no back up in case of emergency on the part of the provider. Also my mom did home daycare when I was a child to bring in extra money. I really grew to resent those kids being in my home, taking my mom’s attention.
We’re paying about $210/wk for Fang in Atlanta. His new daycare in Charlotte will be about $240/wk.
When HC2 comes, we are thinking about getting an Au Pair, which usually runs about $300/wk, according to the agencies.
For our son in the Atlanta area, we are currently paying $170/week, which includes meals, to Kids R Kids (a franchise).
Starting in July however, we will be sending him to a Goddard School, which will be $850/month, and meals are another $20/week or so. We want to try it out and see how it does for him because while the daycare he is at now is okay, there seems to be not a whole lot of learning going on (play is of course most important, but I’d like to see him learn as well).
Wow, it sounds like I’ve found the cheapest daycare ever. I just hope she’s good; I’ll know more this afternoon.
I’m leaning toward a home daycare because the centers seem to have such high turnover around here. I don’t want different people taking care of my kids all the time. I hadn’t thought about the scheduling of vacations and such; I’ll have to ask her about that. Thanks, all!
[QUOTE=MissGypsy]
Amazingly, I got a job, so now I’m looking for childcare for my two little boys. I called around, and I’m going to look at one tomorrow. The cost is $80 per kid per week, but she said she’d give us a discount for two kids. That seems astoundingly low; I’d expected to pay far more than that. (We live in northern Virginia, not far from DC.)
[QUOTE]
How old are your boys?
I live in Arlington and the absolute cheapest I could find for an infant is $150 per week for a quality in-home daycare provider. The ones cheaper than that were either smokers or not really clean environments. After school care for my 8 yr old is $209 per month - although this is discounted because of my income & provided by Arlington Public Schools at the school she attends. If she were to go to the same daycare after school that my infant is, it would cost $75 per week under the table. $100 a week above board.
The boys are almost 4 and almost 6 months. If I had to pay $150 a week per kid, I couldn’t afford to take the job. I’ve been playing with the numbers, trying to figure if the job is going to be worth it.
The cost of child care is what is keeping us from having a child. We’re 33 and 34 and it’s time we did it. We’ve been half-heartedly trying and I’m going to panic when I have to pay $600-800 per month for child care. Neither one of us can quit our jobs to stay home. Living in a rural area, I hope I can find something that’s closer to $400 per month.
Right now, my husband and I don’t fight about money (or anything else, for that matter–our relationship is perfect) and I’m scared that this will change our relationship for the worse. But we don’t want to be childless, either.
Miss Gypsy, you got an excellent price. I hope you get quality care for that price.
Make sure the person you chose has been doing daycare for a while and intends to continue. Some of my coworkers have switched home daycares three or four times during their kids childhoods when daycare provider announces “my kids are in school now, I’m done.” Others have had very stable placings with people who aren’t doing “daycare as a temporary job.” While center turnover is something to watch, there is consistancy as my kids are multiple adults around, and they never turn over all at once - and at least they don’t switch places and playmates when the teachers leave.
The other thing to watch at home daycare is the providers “beliefs.” One of my son’s daycare classmates showed up at the center after Mom found the kids parked in front of Spiderman 2 - not the type of movie she though appropriate for four year olds. I had a friend who sent her son to a daycare where they felt “ministry was an important part of their calling.” When she sent him (this was a Church based center) she was assured that although the church ran the daycare, it was pretty secular and they only said grace at meals. But the church decided they were doing a disservice and that the daycare should be part of the ministry (which is fine, they have that right) and she pulled her son when regular Bible lessons became part of the lesson plan. Once again, this is just something to watch - one of my coworkers seems to have the best home daycare provider in the world in terms of respecting others and not using PG-13 movies (or TV at all) as a babysitter.
All amounts in Candian dollars*, for a 2.5yr old toddler still in diapers:
Agency regulated day home care in private home, 2 snacks, lunch, 6 kids max: $35 / day.
In our home care, with light housekeeping and kid’s laundry: $10/hour for first 10 hours; $15 /hr overtime for hours 11 & onward, including taxes; standard rate is $8, but we really like our nanny, and want to retain her. This includes taxes & deductions, as our nanny is “legal / above board” and we send her taxes & deduction to the government.
*ball park conversion rate: $1 cdn = $0.80 usd.
Well, our youngest is in daycare right now. Our older two stayed home with their mom, so this was a new experience for us. he’s 3 now, and has been attending school since about 3 months.
We pay $80/week, plus 2.50 every week for pizza day on fridays. This includes morning snack, juice/water/milk all day, lunch, and afternoon snack. there is a surcharge of $5/week if you leave your child more than 10 hours/day, but that’s never been an issue for us. It’s just down the road from our house, next to the local elementary school.
We have been pleased from the start. It’s not very flashy, but there are two things that make it perfect in my mind:
The owner/administrator loves kids, and loves my son. Lots of hugs, kisses, etc. for all of the kids, my son especially (mostly because he’s incredibly handsome and charming like his father)
She doesn’t tolerate any nonsense from students, teachers, or parents. All of the rules are administered fairly, and the quality of care is outstanding. Certainly she has some ‘stronger’ teachers than others, but they all love kids. The place is clean, and in addition to a lot of ‘recess’ time, there are spelling/math, etc. lessons appropriate to age level. Morning cartoons along the lines of Dora the Explorer, but that’s it.
It’s not a Christian Daycare, but there are the usual bleed-over evangelical issues you’d find anywhere in the South. It’s not been a problem for us, though that’s certainly not our path.
Like i said, we count ourselves fortunate.
We have an almost-3 yr old and an 8 month old. Currently, we’re paying about $1300 per month (including snacks and lunch) at a large daycare center with a great staff and a big, new, beautiful facility. This is a pretty typical rate for our area (central Texas). My employer’s daycare, which you would think would be more affordable for the employees, costs just as much.
As of next Tuesday, we’re moving them to an in-home daycare which will cost about $1000 per month. Their new caregiver is a former kindergarten teacher who is now working on her master’s in early childhood education, and she has an assistant teacher with her at all times. I feel very comfortable with her, but she seems to be an exception–we looked in to many, many home daycares (because of the cheaper cost) and a lot of them set off my Mommy Radar. Not that there was anything truly BAD about them, but they seemed like places that would use a lot of videos and TV to keep the kids busy, instead of reading books and arts & crafts and playing games and such.
We’re hoping the home daycare will also cut down on the illnesses the kids pick up (and then invariably pass onto Mr. Dax and me). It seems like one or another of us has been sick nonstop since the first kiddo started daycare 2.5 years ago. Our combined sick leave is less than 20 hours 
She does take 2 weeks paid vacation each year–spring break week and a week in summer. Also the usual day or two around Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as Labor Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Good Friday. That will be a problem for us since we don’t have much leave accrued. We’ll either have to use our previous daycare on a drop-in basis, and pay tuition for both places during her two weeks vacation; or we’ll have to scrounge around and see if one of our neighbors or a grandparent might be willing to watch them for at least part of the time. If she is sick, she generally has one of her back-up assistant teachers come in that day, so we hope we won’t have to take any sick days for HER illnesses!
We visited the $80 a week home daycare, and this lady has a lovely home, with 25 horses romping around in a pasture next to the house, a well-equipped outdoor play area, and lots of age-appropriate toys. However, she’s due to deliver her next baby in a few months, and said she’ll only be off for 10 days-2 weeks. I’m not sure how realistic that is; I know I wouldn’t have been up to watching 2 toddlers, 2 babies, and 3-4 part-time school-aged kids (in addition to her own 2 teenaged boys) a couple of weeks after childbirth. Plus, she lives about 12 miles out of our way, out in the country, in the opposite direction from where I’ll be working. She is, however, mature, experienced, and organized.
I called another person, and we visited her too. She’s younger, 24 years old, with a five year old and a 1 year old of her own. She’s not looking to start a daycare, just to babysit during the week for some extra money. She only wants $65 a week per kid, but her kids are a good age to be playmates for mine, and she won’t be taking care of any other kids. (My oldest son is already courting her little girl; he likes little blonde girls. 
) I’m leaning toward her, as her personality clicked with mine better. She’s chattier, which my kids need (because my oldest has a speech delay, so he really needs someone to talk to him a lot). She’s articulate, educated, and her home is spotless. She’s pickier than I am about what kids eat, and goes for more organic stuff. Ok with me. She will also provide lunch and snacks, so all I need to bring is the formula for the baby. She’s very close to here, in a nice townhouse with a playground right outside.
My SO thought the first had more experience, but he acknowledged that my comfort level and ability to connect on a personal level with the second one was important. He said it’s up to me, because I allegedly have that “mother’s intuition.”
We discussed the vacation issue, and because my SO owns his company, he has some flexibility, so he could cover some vacation time until I can take some time off.
I called some of the centers, and sure enough, I’d be paying $260-$300+ a week for both kids, which would mean I’d pay to work. If it comes to that, I’ll stay home. We’ve survived for the last few years with me staying home with the kid(s), so that’s always an option.
Dangerosa, great advice, and thank you. I don’t want the kids bouncing around from one babysitter to another; they need stability. I’m going to ask some more detailed questions of both of them this afternoon, in a follow-up phone call. I’ve already decided against the church-based programs, because I’d like to handle their spiritual education in my own way. (And we haven’t exactly figured out how to do that, as my SO is Catholic and I’m not even Christian.)
It’s so nerve-wracking to leave my kids with someone. My judgment and impressions are all I have to rely upon, and what if I’m wrong? I believe either of these women will take good care of my boys and treat them well. They both seem affectionate and caring.
I think I’m going to go with the second one, and ask the first one if I can call her back if this one doesn’t work out. She already noted that she might be too far away to be convenient for us, so I hope she’ll understand. It’s such a close call.
Thanks again, everyone, for all the input.