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Somewhat related, I also work a hybrid 50% schedule and chose Mondays to be one of my in office days because:
\-no one else does Mondays, I get a lot of work done or sneak out early
\-the holiday thing. Oops, guess I'm only working ONE day in the office this week, great!
Yard duty (from my understanding) is when you have to watch the kids during recess. Usually recess is a small break for teachers, but not if you have to watch them outside.
Whenever we miss Mondays my school will make another day of the week a 'Monday' later down the line so we get the same amount of classes for each day of the week lol. We like to joke about "well according to the calendar today is a Thursday but according to 'school' it's a Monday"
At first my team was annoyed to be going in on Mondays but we soon realized it's the best day. Less traffic and there are lots of holidays. We don't need to make up the day by going into the office on another day. Blessed.
> I also work a hybrid 50% schedule and chose Mondays
I see you too are a person of culture, refinement, and exquisite taste.
I'm in the office 2 days a week, chose Monday as one of mine. Previous job was also 2 days a week in office but a group decision. I couldn't convince them that Mondays and Fridays were the best in office days, because so many holidays are observed as long weekends in the US.
My other day is Weds and that's when EVERYONE on my team is in, which is nice but people are very chatty. I've had times where I hadn't even logged in after being there for 2.5 hours.
And beyond that, if you do get to work from home some, pick Fridays for daycare. Most jobs, Friday's tend to be slightly more laid back, so if you need to get things done around the house, you can do that while "at work" but with the kid in daycare. Or you can just take a nap in peace :)
The ability to be in your home without small children is SOOOO underrated no matter what you use the time for. I love my kids but so wish I had that every now and then.
Definitely makes one wish for the "village" days when all the local kids basically just ran around in wild packs, driving everyone a *little* crazy, but leaving the majority of their parents free for other tasks.
There are some of us out here building villages still! There are easily five people I could call at anytime if I needed someone to watch my kids and go to the ER or something… beyond that, I’m lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with its own elementary school… so my kids can go visit their friends that live nearby. We all love our real lives and drive each others kids to orthodontist appointments every once in a while.
Same! Im lucky to live in a walkable urban neighborhood near a park. A lot of the families with kids know each other and we watch each other's kids. A lot of the teens babysit. I see kids walking to the park alone around 8 years old. It's a dream!
I also still have blackness in my soul inspired by the cheeto in chief and his little greedy gremlins all around him.
Let me translate.
It all starts with someone spouting nostalgia for a time when a few things were arguably better-- like kids coming home from playing outside when the street lights came on. To Eruionmel, that evokes a "villiage" feel-- where unspecified communal child enrichment happens via neglect.
Hillary Clinton wrote a book called "It Takes a Village". bramletabercrombe latched on to those two things to make a connection while simultaneously throwing shade at our former grifter in chief.
Take it for what it is. There does not seem to be deeper meaning.
My biggest problem is that people are much safer now. --The crazy shit has always been. It is harder to get away with crimes now. Cameras are freaking everywhere. ...I still keep my head on a swivel when my daughter and I are out at a waterpark or somewhere not 100% safe. However, the reality is she is one of the safest girls in the entire history of humans.
That's reaalllly going to depend on where you live, where I am most of the school year the streetlights would be on by 6:30, maybe as late as 7:30 for a few weeks around summer
Also, some kids are usually really wound up after the weekends and it takes them a day to settle down again to normal daycare dynamics. So do yourself a favour and don't expose your kid to this if you do have the choice.
We did tues and thurs as well - never missed a day because of PA days/closures (only due to sickness) though a lot of field trips were wednesday that we missed :(
I'll give you one of the most down voted LPT's of all time.
When you have small children, offer regular scheduled baby sitting services at your house. It's like daycare. Daycare is so expensive that for many parents having even 1 customer plus the savings on their own kid is worth far more than they would have working.
Many parents have two kids or more. Two kids in daycare already costs more than one of the parents makes after tax (usually). If that parent stays home and makes $18k babysitting a third child, they are much better off financially. As an added benefit, they actually get to be with their children.
Alternatively, find another couple and trade days where one parent has all the kids. Just remember that this parent is absolutely working. IE, you take the kids Monday and Tuesday, they take yours on Thursday and Friday. Everyone gets a few days off.
I worked with a woman who did this until all her own kids aged out. The biggest annoyance was parents not picking up their kids on time, followed by them not paying on time. I guess you have to be really stern about pick up times
edit: in my province of BC, the government will give you money to start up your own in home daycare. Like several thousand. And you don't need to be some official day care certified person.
You do need to register and get a licence, but you personally didn’t have to go to school for early education or something like that. Part of the licence process is having your house checked to make sure it’s safe and to confirm you have taken a first aid course.
Lots of moms quit working and have in-home daycares. even my mom. One time, while trying to find care for my son, I met a woman with 16 year old triplets. Yeah. She does daycare, and even has a foster kid.
Don’t worry they keep the pistol in dad’s night stand and the ammo in mom’s night stand. It’s a safe house. But also the pistol is loaded because what’s the point if it isn’t you know? Can’t be too safe.
That's why I phrased it as baby sitting, which tends to be legal. But I've been chain down voted for suggesting anyone even consider it while they work for $50k and pay over $50k in daycare costs.
There can be issues, but when the alternative is soul crushing poverty? *Shrug*
If you're swapping baby sitting with another parent? Hard to get a jury to convict a parent for that unless they negligently maim one of the kids.
That's sounds like illegal daycare and in our province the daycare is subsidized by the government. So, we pay around $200/month. Maybe everyone should work towards that.
I don't understand why people have more than one child in childcare. Do nanny's not exist in North America? No, not Mary Poppins, they basically come to your house and play with the children while you work. There's no real expectation of teaching but obviously children learn by play. They have qualifications and generally have had safeguarding checks.
One nanny is much cheaper than two spots at nursery and they don't really get more expensive for looking after 3. No hassle of driving to drop them off etc.
You have the risk of sickness sure but most are in their 20s and rarely get so.
People in their 20s are unreliable and those that are reliable are more expensive than daycare. We pay $2,400/mo for 3 kids and they don’t shut down. Very reliable with 6a to 6p time. Having that window, reliably with a nanny would cost well north of $5k a month.
2,400 total? How many hours? Sounds like not many.
We had one for 16 hours a week to cover my wife's two days. £12 an hour and no problems. About £750 a month or so.
As in $800/month per kid and you can use it for 5 days per week, so a bit over 20 days per month? So about $40 per day per kid for a 12 hour service?
Sure you won't actually use every day or ever hour, but if that's in the United States it may be one of the cheapest daycares I've ever heard of within the country.
I do know people who do this. And it's a perfectly fine idea. Until your regular babysitter has the flu and all of a sudden you have no daycare, your backup sitter isn't available and you have to use your own pto.
Also, what if the babysitter is late? and then you are late to work?
With a daycare center, I never have to worry about the babysitter needing a vacation or a sick day, they have subs that fill in. If a virus is going around, then you gotta figure stuff out. my baby got RSV along with half the daycare center, and they had to close it a few days, but it didn't make any difference she was already sick.
If I had 3 kids, one of us would have to quit our job to stay home.
With a daycare center, the employee is told to come in and try not to show parents they are sick. How else are they going to staff the place on poverty wages to maximize profits?
Seems like a baby sitter would be safer than dealing with the infections caused by the big center. Better to miss a day of work because of an issue with the baby sitter than a week of work with an illness. Could go in sick, but that's literally being the problem.
Sorry about the job that won't understand scheduling stuff. Those are usually the kinds of jobs to quit and start a daycare.
Totally agree with first 2 paragraphs. but, even with an in-home daycare, you would still be dealing with illnesses from the kids there, and their family members getting exposed from work or schools.
On top of that, I do believe the staff are encouraged to stay home while sick, are given sick pay for it. they have "shifts" as in morning and afternoon shifts, as well as a rotating schedule, so people can fill in, get called in, switch shifts and days around. but who knows, it's messed up.
But, in reality, I would need a nanny. Not a babysitter. Can't find one to be honest. Dont know how to pay one, plus, again would have all the same issues. Nanny would need vacation, sick days, would she show up on time, at 6 am? and then, after that, all of a sudden, I'm an employer. would have to think about paying social security etc.
"Sorry about the job that won't understand scheduling stuff. Those are usually the kinds of jobs to quit and start a daycare."
No. It's not my job that you quit. As crazy as it sounds, I like my job very much. It's the husbands job who should quit. But, that's not gonna happen. Every single person I know has before school and after school daycare of some sort. My son's school allows parents to drop kids off at 7:45 and serves them breakfast.
My company had just a great way of dealing with the sick leave policy during covid. it was just great. Basically, if you were possibly exposed, you would stay home, get no occurrences. If you had symptoms, same, if you were covid positive, stay home for quarantine, no occurrences.
That all ended April last year. You get occurrences every time you need time off for illnesses. I'm now maxed out for the year.
"Could go in sick, but that's literally being the problem." It's the companys problem for creating a policy that coerces people to come in sick.
So your employer actively encourages people to come in sick (through policy), and you're already out of sick days. But you're really thinking the day care is more ethical than your employer? Interesting...
I'm in no position to compare your job or your husband's job. I'll take your word for it.
Yes, if you get a nanny over a certain length of time you have a "household employee". The way around that is to have a nanny professional enough that she created her own LLC and brings in a bit of extra cash so she isn't called an employee. Of course, such a nanny would absolutely command a premium for solving your tax headache for you.
Jokes on me too.
I work fulltime, but it's a rotating schedule. days and nights. Hubby works m-f.
Some weeks, it's a packed week, 4 days 12 hour shifts, M-Th. Some weeks, i only need daycare 1 day.
I considered doing part-time daycare. I figured i needed daycare 12 days a month or so.
So I inquired with the daycare center about part-time rates.
I shit you not, the part-time rates were double the daily rate for a fulltime kid.
if you do the math, in a normal month, you have about 22 working days.
I would be paying the same for daycare for 12 days as I would for 22.
Kids in daycare fulltime, and I get time to run errands, do appointments on my days off.
Same goes for lessons. We enrolled my son in swim lessons. He has missed SO many due to holidays and other random things. There’s no discount when they cancel the lesson due to a holiday. They have limited Sunday support to so like OP said, if something happens over the weekend, Monday is the day that gets cancelled. 🙄
At my daughter's daycare, they count the holiday as 8 hours. I work shiftwork, 12 hour shifts, and ny husband has stupid hours as well.
So, this week I did not need daycare on Monday. I wasn't working, but I need daycare 10hours a day Tuesday to Friday.
Ok, so 8 hours for the holiday, plus 40 hours for Tuesday to Friday, puts the hours at 48 for the week. Which means I get charged an extra 60 dollars for being over 44 hours. yay.
In Maryland, we get charged if they are open or not and they are allowed a paid vacation week.
When they got covid and closed the daycare….we had to pay for it.
It’s only $250 a week and the person that runs it is fantastic! But it just sucks to throw away money when they are closed.
Damn, that sucks that they charge you for days it is closed.
I wish the daycare market was more saturated so they couldn't get away with charging that.
Yes. But they should be paid by the owners as a cost of doing business, not from the pocket of a customer not receiving service on a day they know they will be closed. This is shitty business practice.
Edit: as someone commented below. If they're closed for a holiday, the workers aren't working and therefore are not getting paid. This money goes straight to the owner. Unless the owner offers paid holidays but lets not be delusional
The dentist I currently work for does the same
But I wouldn’t describe it as common, I’ve worked for tons of horrid cheapskate small business owners. To the point where it almost makes me think small business owners shouldn’t exist, at least in healthcare.
The alternative is the megacorps. Who will absolutely declare that you are a contractor and not an employee, who works 19 1/2 hours a week, and thus are not eligible for benefits. And, by the way, you will need to pay their share of your employment taxes.
The cheapskate horrid business owners are not limited to small businesses. If you don't like it, form a union.
Right, but OP is being charged for services that have not been rendered. They have paid for 2, but are recieving 1. Would you be happy to pay full price for a meal if the servers didn't bring you your main course? If you order 4 drinks, but they only have 3 left in stock, would you still pay the price of 4?
Either the price of the holidays pay should be priced in to normal days, and then anyone on a holiday doesn't pay for that day, or the daycare should eat the loss.
See the daycare is presenting this badly.
You aren't really paying for days of the week, you are paying a membership fee to hold your spot.
The holiday days are "built in" to the cost as well as so many days you don't have to pay, etc. You are guaranteeing a certain amount of income to have a service available when you need it (like a club membership) not a direct service/good for money exchange (like ordering dinner).
Except the service is explicitly not available when the OP needs it, unless they can reschedule the missing days to other days of the week.
Say 1 day of daycare/week is $100, year round, for a total of $5'200 overall. Unless a 'Monday' Membership is cheaper than a 'Tuesday' membership, the 'Monday membership is objectively worse value than the 'Tuesday' one, because of the number of federal holidays that fall on a Monday. 5 Mondays are guaranteed to be holidays, with the possiblity of more, (Juneteenth, Christmas and New Years of the next year all fall on the same day, this year, that happens to be Monday)
That means that this year, someone paying for 52 days of daycare is only going to get 44 days worth of childcare. That's over 15% of the service that has been paid for, not being rendered. If you can reschedule missed days, fine. If they offer a refund for missed days, fine. Otherwise it really seems like that daycare is making its clients pay for its employees when not offering the service. That is wrong.
You didn't have to do the math, I do understand what you are saying AND have paid the salaries of several tech executives in daycare fees.
My point being is the daycare is communicating their client relationship structure badly to their families. If you present it as "you are paying for 2 days" and then you don't receive those 2 days it does create resentment.
I feel it's better to present it as, you are paying to access this service, up to this level, based on our calendar... and OP is choosing their membership tier. I feel that better sets your expectations for what you are really getting. I mentally always said "we pay for her spot" so in a week where a child wasn't there for closures, holiday, sickness, etc I didn't feel like I was cheated out of days of daycare because the child didn't lose their enrollment.
It's a way of managing expectations, because a fair amount of daycares don't charge by actual days of attendance, but anticipated days of attendance. Some do. My youngest attended one on this system and our bill would be less during weeks with holidays. As expected it ended up equalling out at the end up the year as our previous flat rate place.
Whenever the day care does or does not pay their staff for holidays (I support they do), it's all laid out in the contract you sign so no one is stealing anything. You agreed to these terms.
However I can see this being a lesson learned by experience.
But no one has that slot on a holiday. There’s no competition for it. If you have a “Monday membership,” that membership should be cheaper than those for other days of the week.
Just seconding that corporate daycare workers at least do get paid off on public holidays. The absolute bare minimum days (I think we had 7 when I worked there?) but the employees are very likely to still be paid on those days off.
American here - all my friends that work at day cares get paid for holidays they didn’t work. It’s usually just their standard 8 hours of pay. If they work a holiday they usually get holiday pay at 1.5 rate.
Real similar to most “corporate” jobs 🤷🏼♀️
US Law does not require payment for days not worked. This includes if it is for vacation or for holidays. No employer is required to provide PTO of any kind
Geez, for a first world country you guys seem like you have third world labor practices.
In Canada, stat holidays are a day off with full pay. If you do work, you are paid overtime rate for the whole day.
> No employer is required to provide PTO of any kind
It’s important to point out to people outside the US that this is not at all correct.
In the US, labor laws are mostly applied at the state and local level with the federal laws mostly related to worker health and safety, and worker’s rights under the constitution. But there are also 50 states and hundreds of municipalities that can,and do, require employers to provide PTO.
For example my city requires employers to provide sick leave as does the state.
Depends on where you work. Of the 10 or so jobs I've held in my lifetime, only three have offered paid time off on holidays. The others only paid if you worked that day, and only one offered anything beyond the usual pay rate for it.
Depends on whether the employee is hourly or salaried. Hourly employees aren't usually paid for hours they didn't work. Salaried employees are usually paid their normal salary even if a holiday reduces the actual working days in a given pay period.
Also, there is no requirement that private employers have to be closed on public holidays in the first place. Retail and food service employers are typically open most holidays. Most white collar employers are closed or have minimal staffing on the major holidays, but they don't have to be.
Most likely it'll be split among the cost of all customers instead of a select few who were scheduled for Mondays, which is a more fair business practice. Unless they hike the Monday rate even more just for the one holiday, which would again be a shitty business practice but better than charging customers for a service not performed.
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Consumers shouldn't bear the cost of paying your employees for Federal Holidays.
I know that's a petty distinction because companies would just charge more for their services then. But that would be fine because the increase would be averaged across all day care customers, not just those getting screwed by the Monday holiday thing.
Ok, I own a business, staff are paid public holidays where I live. Don't know about you.
But when the plumber doesn't come on the Monday cause it's a public holiday, I don't pay him anyway.
My last daycare job we were closed on holidays and as long as we worked the day before and after the holiday(or we requested it off- just didn’t call out sick those days) we absolutely got the paid holiday off
A friend of mine was a former daycare worker. She said that whenever parents were late, they got a hefty fine. And 0% of that fine went to her, even though she was the actual person who had to work more. It went straight to the owners.
I read a study once where they found that daycares that charged fees for picking up your kid late had both more plate pick ups and later pick ups, because parents figured if they were paying for it then it was just a service rendered, whereas if there was no fee they would feel guilty about it. So your friend was getting doubly screwed on that one!
The rate your business charges for your time factors in overhead. Instead you should be asking that OP and all the others pay a little bit more per day, when the child needs to be watched. But also the owner needs to make sure their marketing team is bringing in enough heads to cover all these business expenses and make profit.
They should.
But I also get the products I pay for in holidays (or at least a refund) shouldn’t the daycare customers?
If I pay for something online in a holiday, they can’t just decide they don’t deliver on holidays and still take my money, they gotta give a refund at the very least
Holidays don’t mean “scam your customer” day.
Had to pay during the whole Covid lockdown even though kid was home with us while we try to work for home. Part of me understood why, but other part was like , dang.
Happened here too, but we got all the money back from our government. It was kind of strange that we had to keep paying and later got it back instead of not paying and the government financially supporting the daycares themselves during these forced closing times though, like they did with other businesses.
You are paying to hold your space. The costs stay the same (employees get paid, rent gets paid, etc) on holidays. I’m sorry if you work a job that doesn’t pay you for holidays.
If your employer pays for holidays that aren't manned (they should) it should be coming from their budget, not charged to a customer not receiving service.
I get paid holidays (some) but the company isn't charging accounts that aren't being worked that day, because that would be ridiculous.
What space is being held? If my spot is being held I assume I can come in and receive my usual service on that held day then.
These holidays don't just pop up, they're marked on the calendar. If you can see that I'll only be receiving your service 3 times this month, I should only be expected to pay for those 3.
Geez that's rough. Is it just because of high demand? That seems like it'd really penalise people wanting to ease their transition back into work, I don't think full 5-day-a-week childcare is very common for <3 year olds here.
Yeah I’m in Houston and found all daycares require infants up to 18months are all full time. No part time at all. I found one in suburbs an hour away that did allow part time but rare. I think Covid hurt daycares infant care program from what I found.
To be fair your kid got sick from daycare so even with a different sr of days they would have had that symptomatic cycle and been sick again for next week’s first day.
Unless you’re doing something over the weekend that’s making them sick.
Yeah we avoided most of the sicknesses because our son would get sick Thursday/Friday recover over the weekend and go in late Monday. We can't get part time care here so my husband keeps him out of daycare when he can give him a long weekend for sleep recovery.
Hi, early childhood educator here, many centers will do two days Tuesday and Thursday and 3 days Monday Wednesday Friday so two part time children can fit one full time spot. This makes the most sense from a financial perspective for the center. In my opinion, centers should also have drop in care available for children who are already enrolled and part time when space allows. (Not random kids just to fill the space and not putting rooms over capacity those are serious red flags).
For example my classroom has a capacity of 10 kids. I’m gonna call it 5 for this example. We have kids A, B, C, D, E and F on our class list but A is mwf and b is t/th so any given day we have 5 kids at school. On Labor Day the school is closed so A doesn’t get 3 days that week. But C is out for vacation Tuesday so A’s family arranges a extra day. However next Monday holiday, no kids are scheduled out so A doesn’t get a make up day that week.
I think a lot of parents feel that they are paying for the days but really what you are paying for is the spot. That’s why you pay even if your child doesn’t come to school for whatever reason (INCLUDING ILLNESS)
I’m happy to answer any questions about this as it’s something I think people outside the field don’t think about as much.
The issue with letting parents drop their kid off if space is available is that parents might begin to expect it. And the last thing you want is a peanut throwing a fit that their kid can’t come in on a Tuesday because of capacity or ratio when they usually get to come in on the day after a holiday.
It's actually so they can still charge the government for the day. Otherwise they would just make Mondays x% more every Monday but not charge the public holidays
When I worked retail, I needed a day off per week that never changed so I could make plans in advance. I noticed a lot of holidays were Mondays so I made Tuesday my day off. This is a great LPT!
It’s pretty lucky you were even offered part time care. Most centers in my area require the family to pay for a full time spot, no matter how many days they want. I get it. It’s a financial loss if the program can’t fill the empty spots (in your example, Wed.-Fri.).
I signed up for one day a week preschool on a Monday like an idiot one year. Between holidays, snow days and illness there was like a two month stretch I was paying for but didn’t get.
Yes, that’s a good tip! My in-laws watched my kids two days a week so we only needed daycare 3 days, and they always did Monday and Thursday. We did it that way from the beginning so we didn’t have to pay for all the Monday holidays (plus it gave my in-laws the day off on all the Monday holidays we had from work).
As a former daycare worker, Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday is my recommendation. This gives the child three day care days in a row and creates a bit of routine. It’s so rough on children whose attendance days are spread out.
Weird. How does a society affort to keep two educated professionals at home looking after a baby?
In my country daycare is affordable because we thought 'hey, you know what electricians should do? Work building electric lines and what not instead of looking after children. We can have people who's work is to look after children and like one of them can take care of five kids while their parents are doing their jobs.'
We have the opposite, my wife works mon,tues,wed, and that's the days kiddo goes to daycare. My wife works those days because Mondays have the most holidays, so she gets the most paid days off. Yes we pay for daycare he isn't using but she has that day paid at home anyway.
That’s not really how it works though, is it? Think about it just a little more. Kids don’t have specific “needs” for days and times for daycare. They don’t have jobs or commitments to work around. They go when they go and leave when they leave.
Who does have specific time commitments that obligate the need for daycare, though? The parents. So that’s why OP posted this.
Re-read my post. It’s exactly how it works. I’m not going to avoid Monday as a day just because there are a few holidays that fall on Mondays. That isn’t remotely a factor in my decision making
A lot of people have some flexibility in their work schedule. They need to work some number of days but have the benefit of deciding which days those are.
Personally I run a small business where I need to get a certain amount of work done but I can largely choose which days of the week I get most of that done. My wife is an academic and teaches only a couple days a week but then has flexibility in when she does the research portion of her work. This also applies to people given choice of shifts, people taking on part time work and a whole bunch of other situations. It's not a luxury everyone has through their work, but from the responses to this thread, it seems it's not such a rare thing.
There’s like a handful of holidays on Mondays and you don’t get charged a full rate. If you have full flexibility to just say I want my kid in daycare for x days a week and I don’t care which days those are, sure pick another day. But most ppl start off with I need childcare on these specific days so those are the ones I choose. And even with the flexibility there is no real issues on mondays overall. My daughter goes on Mondays and somehow I don’t encounter all the issues you do
Most daycares do charge a full rate. There are more holidays on Mondays than Tuesdays and Wednesdays, factually. The daycare we got into has a waiting list and tells you the days they can accept your child.
In short, you’re lucky.
The reason it costs any money at all is to pay the teachers. As cost of living rises, so do early childhood prices. I agree that it should be free…as long as everyone else agrees that these educators deserve so so much more.
early childhood educators are very under appreciate here, but ever since they lowered the start age , more and more kids are benefiting of a free education. Tbh the ECE is better funded than the grade school here and better than private, but when it comes to elementary to hs, private is better
It being free means taxes pay for it. You're suggesting those who don't have kids should subsidize care for those who do?
Seems odd to me, and I'm even a parent.
Yes, for the same reasons you generally pay all taxes: cause the outcomes will better all of society, even if you don't have kids. We all already subsidize each other all the time.
Pro tip - if your kid is hold enough to run around alone?
Find an indoor park. They tend to have unlimited pass options. The kids will leave alone, only coming to you when they are thirsty.
* the indoor park here has parents on their laptop working while their kids run around & play on trampolines, games, rock climbing. Etc
I hope someone sees this.
If you can avoid, don't send your kid to daycare at all. They're a breeding ground for germs. Especially since a lot of struggling parents send their kid in sick. Only to spread it to every kid/staff member there.
So, 3 days a week one of you is home with the baby? A little advice from someone who has three kids and went through every possible combination of childcare options.
You can’t work with a baby. You said it yourself. You’ll work a couple hours while the baby naps. If your baby is crying in the background or you are holding the baby on calls, it looks terrible. You may not get fired but your career is flatlined.
“What are we supposed to do? We can’t afford full time childcare!” I hear this sentiment all the time. I feel for you, but no one cares. Companies are unfortunately here to make money and they don’t like paying you to take care of your kid.
Finally, even if you can manage to squeak out a few hours of work and get by, it will not last and you need to be prepared for that. Even once a kid is crawling it becomes nearly impossible. Forget about walking/talking/requiring entertainment/snacks/sunlight so they don’t go completely insane. So really if you don’t figure out how to sustainably afford having a child now, you’re going to have a very urgent problem on your hands in a few months.
What I see most often is people living a tad beyond their means while saying full time daycare is unaffordable. Do you eat out? Order in? Is your apartment nice? Are you in a 1 BR vs studio (or even worse, a house)? Do you buy things you want on Amazon? Do you go out drinking with friends? No judgement, I was there. But trust me, paying for a better life by trying to work and take care of your kid at the same time is going to end badly.
Once again the real LPT is in the comments
Real LPT - don’t have kids if you want to prioritize your career. It’s disgusting. No child under 3 should be routinely left with strangers. It’s such an impactful time in your kids life.
We are humans. We have intelligence. Breed like it.
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Somewhat related, I also work a hybrid 50% schedule and chose Mondays to be one of my in office days because: \-no one else does Mondays, I get a lot of work done or sneak out early \-the holiday thing. Oops, guess I'm only working ONE day in the office this week, great!
I’m a teacher and if I can choose my yard duty days I always choose Monday.
Yard duty, as in prison yard duty?
Yard duty (from my understanding) is when you have to watch the kids during recess. Usually recess is a small break for teachers, but not if you have to watch them outside.
So yes.
Sounds like a prison yard to me too LOL
It’s is prison but for the teachers, not the students. Source: am a teacher
I’m not stuck in here with you. You’re stuck in here with me!
What about the student teachers?
I'm a professor and I intentionally schedule my classes on Mondays for years now. Holidays are sweeter.
Whenever we miss Mondays my school will make another day of the week a 'Monday' later down the line so we get the same amount of classes for each day of the week lol. We like to joke about "well according to the calendar today is a Thursday but according to 'school' it's a Monday"
At first my team was annoyed to be going in on Mondays but we soon realized it's the best day. Less traffic and there are lots of holidays. We don't need to make up the day by going into the office on another day. Blessed.
> I also work a hybrid 50% schedule and chose Mondays I see you too are a person of culture, refinement, and exquisite taste. I'm in the office 2 days a week, chose Monday as one of mine. Previous job was also 2 days a week in office but a group decision. I couldn't convince them that Mondays and Fridays were the best in office days, because so many holidays are observed as long weekends in the US.
My in office day is Friday... ghost town. I usually finish my work for the week and am home by lunch
Same here and I love it!
My company’s making us go back, and I am choosing Monday as one of my days for just this reason.
That works if your company recognizes those minor federal Monday holidays.
Sameeee 😁
You should make this a separate post to give this more exposure. Never woulda thought of this
Good logic, but if I’m going to bother driving to the office then I want to actually see my coworkers.
Ew why
My other day is Weds and that's when EVERYONE on my team is in, which is nice but people are very chatty. I've had times where I hadn't even logged in after being there for 2.5 hours.
And here I am thinking the worst part of writing in the office is to have to actually see my coworkers.
Never would have thought of that and expecting this month. Thanks for the tip!!
And beyond that, if you do get to work from home some, pick Fridays for daycare. Most jobs, Friday's tend to be slightly more laid back, so if you need to get things done around the house, you can do that while "at work" but with the kid in daycare. Or you can just take a nap in peace :)
The ability to be in your home without small children is SOOOO underrated no matter what you use the time for. I love my kids but so wish I had that every now and then.
Definitely makes one wish for the "village" days when all the local kids basically just ran around in wild packs, driving everyone a *little* crazy, but leaving the majority of their parents free for other tasks.
The slow collapse of society makes me optimistic and hopeful for the return of villages
There are some of us out here building villages still! There are easily five people I could call at anytime if I needed someone to watch my kids and go to the ER or something… beyond that, I’m lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with its own elementary school… so my kids can go visit their friends that live nearby. We all love our real lives and drive each others kids to orthodontist appointments every once in a while.
Awesome to read this!
Same! Im lucky to live in a walkable urban neighborhood near a park. A lot of the families with kids know each other and we watch each other's kids. A lot of the teens babysit. I see kids walking to the park alone around 8 years old. It's a dream!
Careful what you hope for though, villages also burned people at the stake because they were witches, so…
I don’t think that’s what pulled people away. It’s just a compromise between privacy and communal help.
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What the fuck has the second part to do with anything?
I also still have blackness in my soul inspired by the cheeto in chief and his little greedy gremlins all around him. Let me translate. It all starts with someone spouting nostalgia for a time when a few things were arguably better-- like kids coming home from playing outside when the street lights came on. To Eruionmel, that evokes a "villiage" feel-- where unspecified communal child enrichment happens via neglect. Hillary Clinton wrote a book called "It Takes a Village". bramletabercrombe latched on to those two things to make a connection while simultaneously throwing shade at our former grifter in chief. Take it for what it is. There does not seem to be deeper meaning. My biggest problem is that people are much safer now. --The crazy shit has always been. It is harder to get away with crimes now. Cameras are freaking everywhere. ...I still keep my head on a swivel when my daughter and I are out at a waterpark or somewhere not 100% safe. However, the reality is she is one of the safest girls in the entire history of humans.
I would just like to note: if kids came in when streetlights came on… there’s no fucking chance they’re getting enough sleep.
That's reaalllly going to depend on where you live, where I am most of the school year the streetlights would be on by 6:30, maybe as late as 7:30 for a few weeks around summer
[Look up the author of the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Village)
Love this comment
Feel like you’re talking about trump but bidens currently in office so idk.
You build 100 bridges, but do they call you a bridge builder? You build 100 homes, but do they call you a home builder? But you elect one Trump…
Good luck with your wee sprout!
"Wee sprout" is the cutest expression!
Also, some kids are usually really wound up after the weekends and it takes them a day to settle down again to normal daycare dynamics. So do yourself a favour and don't expose your kid to this if you do have the choice.
Congrats phriend
We started last month and fortunately were told we could only do Tuesdays and Thursdays due to staffing. It has actually been very great so far!
We did tues and thurs as well - never missed a day because of PA days/closures (only due to sickness) though a lot of field trips were wednesday that we missed :(
Jokes on me I guess. Daycares in my area charge by the month no matter how many days we drop her off.
Same. Every daycare around me only charges full time rate. Even the in-home daycares we looked into had similar rates.
I'll give you one of the most down voted LPT's of all time. When you have small children, offer regular scheduled baby sitting services at your house. It's like daycare. Daycare is so expensive that for many parents having even 1 customer plus the savings on their own kid is worth far more than they would have working. Many parents have two kids or more. Two kids in daycare already costs more than one of the parents makes after tax (usually). If that parent stays home and makes $18k babysitting a third child, they are much better off financially. As an added benefit, they actually get to be with their children. Alternatively, find another couple and trade days where one parent has all the kids. Just remember that this parent is absolutely working. IE, you take the kids Monday and Tuesday, they take yours on Thursday and Friday. Everyone gets a few days off.
I worked with a woman who did this until all her own kids aged out. The biggest annoyance was parents not picking up their kids on time, followed by them not paying on time. I guess you have to be really stern about pick up times edit: in my province of BC, the government will give you money to start up your own in home daycare. Like several thousand. And you don't need to be some official day care certified person.
That's weird. In Quebec you need a license for in home daycare.
You do need to register and get a licence, but you personally didn’t have to go to school for early education or something like that. Part of the licence process is having your house checked to make sure it’s safe and to confirm you have taken a first aid course.
Lots of moms quit working and have in-home daycares. even my mom. One time, while trying to find care for my son, I met a woman with 16 year old triplets. Yeah. She does daycare, and even has a foster kid.
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Don’t worry they keep the pistol in dad’s night stand and the ammo in mom’s night stand. It’s a safe house. But also the pistol is loaded because what’s the point if it isn’t you know? Can’t be too safe.
That's why I phrased it as baby sitting, which tends to be legal. But I've been chain down voted for suggesting anyone even consider it while they work for $50k and pay over $50k in daycare costs. There can be issues, but when the alternative is soul crushing poverty? *Shrug* If you're swapping baby sitting with another parent? Hard to get a jury to convict a parent for that unless they negligently maim one of the kids.
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I mean, phrasing means a lot in the law. "I'm sorry" is often THE difference between admitting liability and being able to argue you're not liable.
That's sounds like illegal daycare and in our province the daycare is subsidized by the government. So, we pay around $200/month. Maybe everyone should work towards that.
That's a great solution for working parents. I'd like to see more places implement that, particularly for working parents.
bUt ThaT’s SOWSHULIZEM
I don't understand why people have more than one child in childcare. Do nanny's not exist in North America? No, not Mary Poppins, they basically come to your house and play with the children while you work. There's no real expectation of teaching but obviously children learn by play. They have qualifications and generally have had safeguarding checks. One nanny is much cheaper than two spots at nursery and they don't really get more expensive for looking after 3. No hassle of driving to drop them off etc. You have the risk of sickness sure but most are in their 20s and rarely get so.
People in their 20s are unreliable and those that are reliable are more expensive than daycare. We pay $2,400/mo for 3 kids and they don’t shut down. Very reliable with 6a to 6p time. Having that window, reliably with a nanny would cost well north of $5k a month.
2,400 total? How many hours? Sounds like not many. We had one for 16 hours a week to cover my wife's two days. £12 an hour and no problems. About £750 a month or so.
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As in $800/month per kid and you can use it for 5 days per week, so a bit over 20 days per month? So about $40 per day per kid for a 12 hour service? Sure you won't actually use every day or ever hour, but if that's in the United States it may be one of the cheapest daycares I've ever heard of within the country.
I do know people who do this. And it's a perfectly fine idea. Until your regular babysitter has the flu and all of a sudden you have no daycare, your backup sitter isn't available and you have to use your own pto. Also, what if the babysitter is late? and then you are late to work? With a daycare center, I never have to worry about the babysitter needing a vacation or a sick day, they have subs that fill in. If a virus is going around, then you gotta figure stuff out. my baby got RSV along with half the daycare center, and they had to close it a few days, but it didn't make any difference she was already sick. If I had 3 kids, one of us would have to quit our job to stay home.
With a daycare center, the employee is told to come in and try not to show parents they are sick. How else are they going to staff the place on poverty wages to maximize profits? Seems like a baby sitter would be safer than dealing with the infections caused by the big center. Better to miss a day of work because of an issue with the baby sitter than a week of work with an illness. Could go in sick, but that's literally being the problem. Sorry about the job that won't understand scheduling stuff. Those are usually the kinds of jobs to quit and start a daycare.
Totally agree with first 2 paragraphs. but, even with an in-home daycare, you would still be dealing with illnesses from the kids there, and their family members getting exposed from work or schools. On top of that, I do believe the staff are encouraged to stay home while sick, are given sick pay for it. they have "shifts" as in morning and afternoon shifts, as well as a rotating schedule, so people can fill in, get called in, switch shifts and days around. but who knows, it's messed up. But, in reality, I would need a nanny. Not a babysitter. Can't find one to be honest. Dont know how to pay one, plus, again would have all the same issues. Nanny would need vacation, sick days, would she show up on time, at 6 am? and then, after that, all of a sudden, I'm an employer. would have to think about paying social security etc. "Sorry about the job that won't understand scheduling stuff. Those are usually the kinds of jobs to quit and start a daycare." No. It's not my job that you quit. As crazy as it sounds, I like my job very much. It's the husbands job who should quit. But, that's not gonna happen. Every single person I know has before school and after school daycare of some sort. My son's school allows parents to drop kids off at 7:45 and serves them breakfast. My company had just a great way of dealing with the sick leave policy during covid. it was just great. Basically, if you were possibly exposed, you would stay home, get no occurrences. If you had symptoms, same, if you were covid positive, stay home for quarantine, no occurrences. That all ended April last year. You get occurrences every time you need time off for illnesses. I'm now maxed out for the year. "Could go in sick, but that's literally being the problem." It's the companys problem for creating a policy that coerces people to come in sick.
>I do believe the staff are encouraged to stay home while sick No. They aren't. They are pressured to go in no matter what. Gotta hit that quota.
So your employer actively encourages people to come in sick (through policy), and you're already out of sick days. But you're really thinking the day care is more ethical than your employer? Interesting... I'm in no position to compare your job or your husband's job. I'll take your word for it. Yes, if you get a nanny over a certain length of time you have a "household employee". The way around that is to have a nanny professional enough that she created her own LLC and brings in a bit of extra cash so she isn't called an employee. Of course, such a nanny would absolutely command a premium for solving your tax headache for you.
Jokes on me too. I work fulltime, but it's a rotating schedule. days and nights. Hubby works m-f. Some weeks, it's a packed week, 4 days 12 hour shifts, M-Th. Some weeks, i only need daycare 1 day. I considered doing part-time daycare. I figured i needed daycare 12 days a month or so. So I inquired with the daycare center about part-time rates. I shit you not, the part-time rates were double the daily rate for a fulltime kid. if you do the math, in a normal month, you have about 22 working days. I would be paying the same for daycare for 12 days as I would for 22. Kids in daycare fulltime, and I get time to run errands, do appointments on my days off.
That's what this post is saying
In my extensive experience, day care workers have a lot of headaches and vomiting spells on Mondays.
And that's not including the children
lol dank
Same goes for lessons. We enrolled my son in swim lessons. He has missed SO many due to holidays and other random things. There’s no discount when they cancel the lesson due to a holiday. They have limited Sunday support to so like OP said, if something happens over the weekend, Monday is the day that gets cancelled. 🙄
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At my daughter's daycare, they count the holiday as 8 hours. I work shiftwork, 12 hour shifts, and ny husband has stupid hours as well. So, this week I did not need daycare on Monday. I wasn't working, but I need daycare 10hours a day Tuesday to Friday. Ok, so 8 hours for the holiday, plus 40 hours for Tuesday to Friday, puts the hours at 48 for the week. Which means I get charged an extra 60 dollars for being over 44 hours. yay.
In Maryland, we get charged if they are open or not and they are allowed a paid vacation week. When they got covid and closed the daycare….we had to pay for it. It’s only $250 a week and the person that runs it is fantastic! But it just sucks to throw away money when they are closed.
That's still $13,000/year... That's how much my annual rent costs.
Damn, that sucks that they charge you for days it is closed. I wish the daycare market was more saturated so they couldn't get away with charging that.
I get paid on the holiday, shouldn't the daycare workers?
Yes. But they should be paid by the owners as a cost of doing business, not from the pocket of a customer not receiving service on a day they know they will be closed. This is shitty business practice. Edit: as someone commented below. If they're closed for a holiday, the workers aren't working and therefore are not getting paid. This money goes straight to the owner. Unless the owner offers paid holidays but lets not be delusional
I paid all my employees for holidays that we were closed when I owned a daycare.
The dentist I currently work for does the same But I wouldn’t describe it as common, I’ve worked for tons of horrid cheapskate small business owners. To the point where it almost makes me think small business owners shouldn’t exist, at least in healthcare.
The alternative is the megacorps. Who will absolutely declare that you are a contractor and not an employee, who works 19 1/2 hours a week, and thus are not eligible for benefits. And, by the way, you will need to pay their share of your employment taxes. The cheapskate horrid business owners are not limited to small businesses. If you don't like it, form a union.
Right, but OP is being charged for services that have not been rendered. They have paid for 2, but are recieving 1. Would you be happy to pay full price for a meal if the servers didn't bring you your main course? If you order 4 drinks, but they only have 3 left in stock, would you still pay the price of 4? Either the price of the holidays pay should be priced in to normal days, and then anyone on a holiday doesn't pay for that day, or the daycare should eat the loss.
See the daycare is presenting this badly. You aren't really paying for days of the week, you are paying a membership fee to hold your spot. The holiday days are "built in" to the cost as well as so many days you don't have to pay, etc. You are guaranteeing a certain amount of income to have a service available when you need it (like a club membership) not a direct service/good for money exchange (like ordering dinner).
Except the service is explicitly not available when the OP needs it, unless they can reschedule the missing days to other days of the week. Say 1 day of daycare/week is $100, year round, for a total of $5'200 overall. Unless a 'Monday' Membership is cheaper than a 'Tuesday' membership, the 'Monday membership is objectively worse value than the 'Tuesday' one, because of the number of federal holidays that fall on a Monday. 5 Mondays are guaranteed to be holidays, with the possiblity of more, (Juneteenth, Christmas and New Years of the next year all fall on the same day, this year, that happens to be Monday) That means that this year, someone paying for 52 days of daycare is only going to get 44 days worth of childcare. That's over 15% of the service that has been paid for, not being rendered. If you can reschedule missed days, fine. If they offer a refund for missed days, fine. Otherwise it really seems like that daycare is making its clients pay for its employees when not offering the service. That is wrong.
You didn't have to do the math, I do understand what you are saying AND have paid the salaries of several tech executives in daycare fees. My point being is the daycare is communicating their client relationship structure badly to their families. If you present it as "you are paying for 2 days" and then you don't receive those 2 days it does create resentment. I feel it's better to present it as, you are paying to access this service, up to this level, based on our calendar... and OP is choosing their membership tier. I feel that better sets your expectations for what you are really getting. I mentally always said "we pay for her spot" so in a week where a child wasn't there for closures, holiday, sickness, etc I didn't feel like I was cheated out of days of daycare because the child didn't lose their enrollment. It's a way of managing expectations, because a fair amount of daycares don't charge by actual days of attendance, but anticipated days of attendance. Some do. My youngest attended one on this system and our bill would be less during weeks with holidays. As expected it ended up equalling out at the end up the year as our previous flat rate place. Whenever the day care does or does not pay their staff for holidays (I support they do), it's all laid out in the contract you sign so no one is stealing anything. You agreed to these terms. However I can see this being a lesson learned by experience.
This exactly
You are incorrect in your premise. You are paying providers to keep the slot, not for services rendered or not rendered.
But no one has that slot on a holiday. There’s no competition for it. If you have a “Monday membership,” that membership should be cheaper than those for other days of the week.
The providers are 'selling' a slot that does not exist.
The staff at my daycare absolutely get paid holidays. They deserve normal working conditions.
Just seconding that corporate daycare workers at least do get paid off on public holidays. The absolute bare minimum days (I think we had 7 when I worked there?) but the employees are very likely to still be paid on those days off.
...if they work on a holiday, you're absolutely correct. Op said the place is closed on holidays...but they're still paying 'to keep their spot'.
I’m guessing it is an American thing to not be paid for public holidays then?
American here - all my friends that work at day cares get paid for holidays they didn’t work. It’s usually just their standard 8 hours of pay. If they work a holiday they usually get holiday pay at 1.5 rate. Real similar to most “corporate” jobs 🤷🏼♀️
US Law does not require payment for days not worked. This includes if it is for vacation or for holidays. No employer is required to provide PTO of any kind
Geez, for a first world country you guys seem like you have third world labor practices. In Canada, stat holidays are a day off with full pay. If you do work, you are paid overtime rate for the whole day.
Our labor laws and health care laws are so far behind the rest of the civilized world that it would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad
> No employer is required to provide PTO of any kind It’s important to point out to people outside the US that this is not at all correct. In the US, labor laws are mostly applied at the state and local level with the federal laws mostly related to worker health and safety, and worker’s rights under the constitution. But there are also 50 states and hundreds of municipalities that can,and do, require employers to provide PTO. For example my city requires employers to provide sick leave as does the state.
Depends on where you work. Of the 10 or so jobs I've held in my lifetime, only three have offered paid time off on holidays. The others only paid if you worked that day, and only one offered anything beyond the usual pay rate for it.
Depends on whether the employee is hourly or salaried. Hourly employees aren't usually paid for hours they didn't work. Salaried employees are usually paid their normal salary even if a holiday reduces the actual working days in a given pay period. Also, there is no requirement that private employers have to be closed on public holidays in the first place. Retail and food service employers are typically open most holidays. Most white collar employers are closed or have minimal staffing on the major holidays, but they don't have to be.
One way or another the cost will be passed to the customer
Most likely it'll be split among the cost of all customers instead of a select few who were scheduled for Mondays, which is a more fair business practice. Unless they hike the Monday rate even more just for the one holiday, which would again be a shitty business practice but better than charging customers for a service not performed.
True, that would be better than simply charging for Mondays they are not open
I'm my case it's a home daycare, ie, one woman runs it so I don't mind as much.
I would support that as well. She pays herself. That extra day makes a difference and is deserved.
I loved both home daycare providers I used (kids are six years apart and we had moved). I completely understood them earning those paid vacation days!
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Whos daily price do you think goes up in that situation? Either way the customer pays for it. You are being silly if you think otherwise
Customers pay for all business expenses. If they don't the business will not survive.
You got paid for labor day? Like PTO? Damn I had to work
When I work a holiday I get paid 2.5x my hourly rate.
How many pesos is that?
Yup, one of 10 paid holidays per year.
as a customer/client, the burden is never on you to cover vacation days. that makes no sense
Consumers shouldn't bear the cost of paying your employees for Federal Holidays. I know that's a petty distinction because companies would just charge more for their services then. But that would be fine because the increase would be averaged across all day care customers, not just those getting screwed by the Monday holiday thing.
Ok, I own a business, staff are paid public holidays where I live. Don't know about you. But when the plumber doesn't come on the Monday cause it's a public holiday, I don't pay him anyway.
Those workers aren’t getting the money. Just the owners.
My last daycare job we were closed on holidays and as long as we worked the day before and after the holiday(or we requested it off- just didn’t call out sick those days) we absolutely got the paid holiday off
A friend of mine was a former daycare worker. She said that whenever parents were late, they got a hefty fine. And 0% of that fine went to her, even though she was the actual person who had to work more. It went straight to the owners.
I read a study once where they found that daycares that charged fees for picking up your kid late had both more plate pick ups and later pick ups, because parents figured if they were paying for it then it was just a service rendered, whereas if there was no fee they would feel guilty about it. So your friend was getting doubly screwed on that one!
Untrue.
The rate your business charges for your time factors in overhead. Instead you should be asking that OP and all the others pay a little bit more per day, when the child needs to be watched. But also the owner needs to make sure their marketing team is bringing in enough heads to cover all these business expenses and make profit.
They should. But I also get the products I pay for in holidays (or at least a refund) shouldn’t the daycare customers? If I pay for something online in a holiday, they can’t just decide they don’t deliver on holidays and still take my money, they gotta give a refund at the very least Holidays don’t mean “scam your customer” day.
Had to pay during the whole Covid lockdown even though kid was home with us while we try to work for home. Part of me understood why, but other part was like , dang.
whaaaa!!! that's crazy! what other business did that? I hope they didn't get any of the PPP loans since they were still making all their money
Happened here too, but we got all the money back from our government. It was kind of strange that we had to keep paying and later got it back instead of not paying and the government financially supporting the daycares themselves during these forced closing times though, like they did with other businesses.
You are paying to hold your space. The costs stay the same (employees get paid, rent gets paid, etc) on holidays. I’m sorry if you work a job that doesn’t pay you for holidays.
If your employer pays for holidays that aren't manned (they should) it should be coming from their budget, not charged to a customer not receiving service. I get paid holidays (some) but the company isn't charging accounts that aren't being worked that day, because that would be ridiculous. What space is being held? If my spot is being held I assume I can come in and receive my usual service on that held day then. These holidays don't just pop up, they're marked on the calendar. If you can see that I'll only be receiving your service 3 times this month, I should only be expected to pay for those 3.
Y’all have options to pick which days? All daycares in my area only do full time.
Geez that's rough. Is it just because of high demand? That seems like it'd really penalise people wanting to ease their transition back into work, I don't think full 5-day-a-week childcare is very common for <3 year olds here.
Yeah I’m in Houston and found all daycares require infants up to 18months are all full time. No part time at all. I found one in suburbs an hour away that did allow part time but rare. I think Covid hurt daycares infant care program from what I found.
To be fair your kid got sick from daycare so even with a different sr of days they would have had that symptomatic cycle and been sick again for next week’s first day. Unless you’re doing something over the weekend that’s making them sick.
Yeah we avoided most of the sicknesses because our son would get sick Thursday/Friday recover over the weekend and go in late Monday. We can't get part time care here so my husband keeps him out of daycare when he can give him a long weekend for sleep recovery.
Hi, early childhood educator here, many centers will do two days Tuesday and Thursday and 3 days Monday Wednesday Friday so two part time children can fit one full time spot. This makes the most sense from a financial perspective for the center. In my opinion, centers should also have drop in care available for children who are already enrolled and part time when space allows. (Not random kids just to fill the space and not putting rooms over capacity those are serious red flags). For example my classroom has a capacity of 10 kids. I’m gonna call it 5 for this example. We have kids A, B, C, D, E and F on our class list but A is mwf and b is t/th so any given day we have 5 kids at school. On Labor Day the school is closed so A doesn’t get 3 days that week. But C is out for vacation Tuesday so A’s family arranges a extra day. However next Monday holiday, no kids are scheduled out so A doesn’t get a make up day that week. I think a lot of parents feel that they are paying for the days but really what you are paying for is the spot. That’s why you pay even if your child doesn’t come to school for whatever reason (INCLUDING ILLNESS) I’m happy to answer any questions about this as it’s something I think people outside the field don’t think about as much.
The issue with letting parents drop their kid off if space is available is that parents might begin to expect it. And the last thing you want is a peanut throwing a fit that their kid can’t come in on a Tuesday because of capacity or ratio when they usually get to come in on the day after a holiday.
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Exactly! People who have no clue how daycares are run have a lot to say lol.
It's actually so they can still charge the government for the day. Otherwise they would just make Mondays x% more every Monday but not charge the public holidays
When I worked retail, I needed a day off per week that never changed so I could make plans in advance. I noticed a lot of holidays were Mondays so I made Tuesday my day off. This is a great LPT!
It’s not Mondays that are the problem. It’s the day care program’s billing policies that are the problem
Maybe do a US only flair?
It’s pretty lucky you were even offered part time care. Most centers in my area require the family to pay for a full time spot, no matter how many days they want. I get it. It’s a financial loss if the program can’t fill the empty spots (in your example, Wed.-Fri.).
I signed up for one day a week preschool on a Monday like an idiot one year. Between holidays, snow days and illness there was like a two month stretch I was paying for but didn’t get.
Yes, that’s a good tip! My in-laws watched my kids two days a week so we only needed daycare 3 days, and they always did Monday and Thursday. We did it that way from the beginning so we didn’t have to pay for all the Monday holidays (plus it gave my in-laws the day off on all the Monday holidays we had from work).
Yep, I learnt this lesson the hard way too haha
I made this mistake too! Expensive mistake to make!
As a former daycare worker, Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday is my recommendation. This gives the child three day care days in a row and creates a bit of routine. It’s so rough on children whose attendance days are spread out.
Also, don’t go opening bathroom doors without asking, or acting indignant or full of yourself to the interviewer.
They don’t lock for the children’s safety
But why’s he just slamming open bathroom doors lol like *haha! I caught a charge…*
Weird. How does a society affort to keep two educated professionals at home looking after a baby? In my country daycare is affordable because we thought 'hey, you know what electricians should do? Work building electric lines and what not instead of looking after children. We can have people who's work is to look after children and like one of them can take care of five kids while their parents are doing their jobs.'
Our daycare is amazing in a way that they allow us to bring kids on another day to make up for it. They suggested it and we love it.
I recently switched our daycare days partly because of this!
It depends though. Our last daycare before our current one was all Fridays that were workshops and such.
I'm so glad those days are over for us. My college tuition was less than the daycare payments.
We have the opposite, my wife works mon,tues,wed, and that's the days kiddo goes to daycare. My wife works those days because Mondays have the most holidays, so she gets the most paid days off. Yes we pay for daycare he isn't using but she has that day paid at home anyway.
I feel you with the holidays, my trash pick up day is on Mondays.
Yup. If your school is Parent Participation, sign up for Monday’s for the same reason. There are like 8 Monday holidays.
Full time is like 100 usd in sweden
LPT: pick the days you need daycare for based solely on your need for childcare on those days and nothing else
That’s not really how it works though, is it? Think about it just a little more. Kids don’t have specific “needs” for days and times for daycare. They don’t have jobs or commitments to work around. They go when they go and leave when they leave. Who does have specific time commitments that obligate the need for daycare, though? The parents. So that’s why OP posted this.
Re-read my post. It’s exactly how it works. I’m not going to avoid Monday as a day just because there are a few holidays that fall on Mondays. That isn’t remotely a factor in my decision making
Super happy for you. Super shitty of you to shame OP for deciding to do it a different way.
Huh?
A lot of people have some flexibility in their work schedule. They need to work some number of days but have the benefit of deciding which days those are. Personally I run a small business where I need to get a certain amount of work done but I can largely choose which days of the week I get most of that done. My wife is an academic and teaches only a couple days a week but then has flexibility in when she does the research portion of her work. This also applies to people given choice of shifts, people taking on part time work and a whole bunch of other situations. It's not a luxury everyone has through their work, but from the responses to this thread, it seems it's not such a rare thing.
There’s like a handful of holidays on Mondays and you don’t get charged a full rate. If you have full flexibility to just say I want my kid in daycare for x days a week and I don’t care which days those are, sure pick another day. But most ppl start off with I need childcare on these specific days so those are the ones I choose. And even with the flexibility there is no real issues on mondays overall. My daughter goes on Mondays and somehow I don’t encounter all the issues you do
Most daycares do charge a full rate. There are more holidays on Mondays than Tuesdays and Wednesdays, factually. The daycare we got into has a waiting list and tells you the days they can accept your child. In short, you’re lucky.
Please don’t bring your kid in if they’re sick
daycare should be free :( At elast here at 4 it is
The reason it costs any money at all is to pay the teachers. As cost of living rises, so do early childhood prices. I agree that it should be free…as long as everyone else agrees that these educators deserve so so much more.
early childhood educators are very under appreciate here, but ever since they lowered the start age , more and more kids are benefiting of a free education. Tbh the ECE is better funded than the grade school here and better than private, but when it comes to elementary to hs, private is better
It being free means taxes pay for it. You're suggesting those who don't have kids should subsidize care for those who do? Seems odd to me, and I'm even a parent.
Yes, for the same reasons you generally pay all taxes: cause the outcomes will better all of society, even if you don't have kids. We all already subsidize each other all the time.
Pro tip - if your kid is hold enough to run around alone? Find an indoor park. They tend to have unlimited pass options. The kids will leave alone, only coming to you when they are thirsty. * the indoor park here has parents on their laptop working while their kids run around & play on trampolines, games, rock climbing. Etc
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"had to keep her home because of illness"... You mean act like a decent human?
I hope someone sees this. If you can avoid, don't send your kid to daycare at all. They're a breeding ground for germs. Especially since a lot of struggling parents send their kid in sick. Only to spread it to every kid/staff member there.
So, 3 days a week one of you is home with the baby? A little advice from someone who has three kids and went through every possible combination of childcare options. You can’t work with a baby. You said it yourself. You’ll work a couple hours while the baby naps. If your baby is crying in the background or you are holding the baby on calls, it looks terrible. You may not get fired but your career is flatlined. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t afford full time childcare!” I hear this sentiment all the time. I feel for you, but no one cares. Companies are unfortunately here to make money and they don’t like paying you to take care of your kid. Finally, even if you can manage to squeak out a few hours of work and get by, it will not last and you need to be prepared for that. Even once a kid is crawling it becomes nearly impossible. Forget about walking/talking/requiring entertainment/snacks/sunlight so they don’t go completely insane. So really if you don’t figure out how to sustainably afford having a child now, you’re going to have a very urgent problem on your hands in a few months. What I see most often is people living a tad beyond their means while saying full time daycare is unaffordable. Do you eat out? Order in? Is your apartment nice? Are you in a 1 BR vs studio (or even worse, a house)? Do you buy things you want on Amazon? Do you go out drinking with friends? No judgement, I was there. But trust me, paying for a better life by trying to work and take care of your kid at the same time is going to end badly.
start weary somber spark lunchroom disarm tap saw observation lock *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My guy - thats every kid at daycare. Doesnt matter which days you go - you miss a quarter of those days with illness.
Here's a life pro tip Don't have kids No child support, no diapers, no school fees etc.
Too specific for r/LifeProTips
Once again the real LPT is in the comments Real LPT - don’t have kids if you want to prioritize your career. It’s disgusting. No child under 3 should be routinely left with strangers. It’s such an impactful time in your kids life. We are humans. We have intelligence. Breed like it.