Considering Doing the Thing I Said I'd Never Do

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Me: Since when can you read an analog clock?
Him: Odd Squad
Me: Did they teach you negative numbers in kindergarten?
Him: Nope, Odd Squad.

I forgive them for their plotlines and acting. 🤣
 
I love her! My love must be too obvious because they have unanimously rejected Peg. 😔
 
First, wow! Finding a nanny who will work full time for less than $600 per week is something that likely deserves it’s own thread. That is quite a gem you have found!

Just tossing these things out, what about when the kids are sick? Daycare will send them home and require they stay home for a certain amount of time. From my experiences and those of my friends, kids in daycare get sick more often (because you have more kids, teachers who come to work when sick, etc.)

A good, professional nanny will be doing enrichment with your kids every day. (As you know, there is a difference between a professional nanny and someone who simply babysits in your home.) The nanny will be teaching them how to wait their turn, be polite, etc.

That $340 per month can pay for museum passes, art supplies, gardening supplies, and still have money left over for a savings account.

I’m team nanny.
 
Allegra said:
Why do you suppose, of all things, they decided to have a bowling alley?
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Maybe they bought a facility that already had a bowling alley installed? Maybe the owner used to dream of being a professional bowler?
 
We’ve never found a nanny that charged anywhere near to $600. Such nannies would probably not be looking for work in our neighborhood. I’m a certified teacher and I only make slightly above $600 a week myself! Since my daughter has been born, we’ve had three nannies and they’ve all charged between $350 and $400 a week. (Tax papers got lost somewhere.) Speaking of which, we discovered a point last night that we hadn’t considered. Since none of our nannies were exactly square with Uncle Sam, we have never been able to take the childcare tax credit, which is projected to be 35% of the cost of the childcare. That will just about make up the difference in the long run. So, I guess money isn’t really an issue here either.
 
No, they build this place from scratch. We watched it rise from the dust, right next to the bank where my husband works. I like to imagine the second scenario, that the designer was a life-long bowling enthusiast, or was maybe that kid who never once got invited to a bowling party during their childhood.
 
I get you point about “sick days”, but in our experience, the nanny and/or the nanny’s kid got sick way more than our kids did! Plus, I have a reasonable to darn right generous family leave policy if my kids get sick. I have no leave policy for if the nanny gets sick.
 
Sounds like you’re leaning strongly towards the daycare. If that’s the case, snatch up those spots ASAP!

Really, you know what’s best for your kids. There will be a give and take with whatever form of daycare you choose, because nobody will be you and your husband.

And yeah, that childcare tax credit absolutely makes a difference! We used a licensed home daycare for our son for four years, and she did everything by the book regarding taxes. It was such a blessing to get that tax credit every year. 😃
 
Allegra said:
So, basically it comes down to a matter of philosophy and money. Is being able to play with other kids (some of which may not be very nice) and do incredible impressive activities more important than the calm, controlled environment in my home, where they might not get to do quite as much, but have the freedom to focus on what they like for as long as it suits them? And if so, is it so important that it’s worth what we’ll have to give up in order to afford an extra $85 a week? Any thoughts?
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Your kiddo will learn to deal with kids who are nice and who are not nice…a skill that will come in handy when she starts school. You child will also learn how to cope with not being able to do a certain activity for as long as she may want. Again, something that will come in handy later in life.

As to the money part, I can’t answer that, I had to work full time when my kiddo was younger so my choice was between different types of daycare, not whether to use it or not. I can tell you that lots of kids thrive in DC. The important thing is doing what’s right for your family. If you kid loves to go, then let her go. Mine loved her DC. She rarely wanted to leave when I arrived for pick up so we’d end up staying a while longer, chatting with the teachers, and sometimes I’d get down and play in the sand box too, or read the kids a book if it was raining. At age 20, DD has good memories of going to the Berry Patch in St. Louis. She even went back as a summer volunteer when she was in HS, took her guitar and played for the kids. They wore her out, but she had fun!
 
Zucchini chocolate chip loaf is very nice. My mother used to make it when we were kids. My grandfather never liked it because he said he didn’t like vegetables in his dessert 🙂
 
I’m sure my kids will cope with not being able to do things as long as they like. They have reasonable limits put on them now. They have to come to the table at meal times and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Sometimes it’s time to clean up. Sometimes it’s time to leave the house and go somewhere else. They’re both pretty good about that. That isn’t really the issue though.

My concern is that it is inherent in the nature of daycare that there is a very strict schedule and no flexibility at all. They also seem to limit activity times to very short segments. For example, their previous daycare would schedule 20 minutes for play-doh. Nearly a third of that time had to be spent on clean up, so that doesn’t really leave enough time really plan, experiment, and finish a project, particularly when the kid next to you keeps hogging the color you need. This may be the way some kindergartens are run, but it is NOT what is best for kids.

Any teacher that has been in-service for a significant amount of time will tell you that kids are increasingly suffering from a deficit in both attention span and problem solving skills. The experts all seem to agree and many believe that the problem can be linked to the typical child not having sufficient time to focus on something of their own interest. For example, the daycare might have a train table where they can spend 15 minutes running the trains over the tracks. However, to save time, the tracks are glued down so they don’t have the chance to experiment, adjust, make hypothesizes, and really construct a train set that teaches them something about design, physics, etc. You see what I’m saying?

So the question is, what is more important? Getting to play with a whole lot of other kids and experience some activities that are hard to replicate at home with less kids,(ex cosmic bowling), or having the freedom to really focus on an activity and build important problem solving skills? Another thing to consider is can the lack of time and freedom and school be made up when they’re home with me? I guess we can’t really know without giving it a try.

One thing I do like about this particular preschool is that the art room has cubbies for each class so students can actually return to a project they were working on if they run out of time. Obviously, it’s a little harder to leave everybody’s blocks or magnet-tiles out the same way, but that at least indicates that someone is aware of the issue.
 
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We love making that too. It’s like banana bread but with veggies! We don’t have any zucchini yet. They must have planted their earlier or something.
 
Allegra said:
So the question is, what is more important? Getting to play with a whole lot of other kids and experience some activities that are hard to replicate at home with less kids,(ex cosmic bowling), or having the freedom to really focus on an activity and build important problem solving skills? Another thing to consider is can the lack of time and freedom and school be made up when they’re home with me? I guess we can’t really know without giving it a try.
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I can only share with you that at home time was definitely spent doing things that my kiddo liked doing. To use your train example, she wouldn’t have been that interested…now playing with little animals she was all over that and could have done that for hours…

I get what you are saying, honestly. I do think that the lack of time and freedom at school can be made up when they are home. School is the opportunity to learn all sorts of new things and home is where they go to decompress, decide what things they liked the most, etc.

Best of luck to you in this decision!
 
Allegra said:
Since none of our nannies were exactly square with Uncle Sam,
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Yeah…this could come back to bite you badly. If they were working full time they have the right to sue you for the employer portion of income taxes.

No matter what you do you need to get out of that nanny situation. You cannot be ripping off Uncle Sam. Nothing good comes of that. So I’d tell you to factor in the costs of a legitimatly employeed nanny vs this daycare.
 
Again, your daughter is nearly 5. This sort of structure is what will challenge her entering Kindergarten, not the academics. It’s probably healthy for her to start to learn now when thins are lower stakes if you plan to send her to kindergarten.

I guess because I worked with my special needs niece and I’ve kept it up, but we had an “inherently strict” schedule. We woke up at the same time, we ate breakfast at the same time. We did things on an incredibly rigirous schedule. Naps were X time.

We don’t have a train table–that’s at the library and yes, some are glued down. Oldest would not touch play-dough for the longest time. She loved duplo/tinker toys but only when people were around–so on my very strict schedule there were many times she only got 20 minutes to play.

It looks like there is an enormous amout of free play at this center. They also seem to have a big “practice and repititon”. The fact that they plan for and acknowlege that children may finish their work at a different pace and give them space to do so means that they seem to be more in line with your way of thinking than I think you are giving them credit for.
 
Why would they do this? How would it possibly benefit them? In order to sue us, they’d have to admit that they also own income tax, and for two of the three, they had been working for other families longer than us so they would be hurting themselves way more than hurting us. (and we never gave any of them reason to hurt us.) The only possible motivation for doing this would be if they got caught themselves, which is highly unlikely, and in which case, what do you do? We’d have to pay it.
 
Allegra said:
Why would they do this? How would it possibly benefit them? In order to sue us, they’d have to admit that they also own income tax, and for two of the three, they had been working for other families longer than us so they would be hurting themselves way more than hurting us. (and we never gave any of them reason to hurt us.) The only possible motivation for doing this would be if they got caught themselves, which is highly unlikely, and in which case, what do you do? We’d have to pay it.
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There are a few reasons. They might need to prove employment history for a government position. They might need to take out a loan. They might be married and have spouses who need security clearance. “Hurting you” is not really on their radar unless they are forced to come clean and realize they’d not only owe for their amount but their employer’s amount.

It happens enough times that our financial advisor warned us never to do it, and given his line of work I’d say he is more in tune with what can happen. He said it’s almost never out of malice, but usually for the reasons listed above. Husband and I were curious as I had considered taking on childcare before I found much better paying remote work.
 
She’s not going to kindergarten until next year. Why can’t she be in kindergarten when she’s IN kindergarten? Kindergarten is only supposed to be one year of a child’s life. It’s silly to try to make a 4yo’s schedule like a kindergartener’s schedule because they aren’t in kindergarten. Don’t you think kindergarten teachers know how to help a student adjust to a more rigid schedule? They aren’t idiots! At least, the one’s I work with aren’t! And it’s FAR more common for a new kindergartener to have difficulty adjusting to focusing on one thing for the whole period of time than it is the other way around. Most kindy lessons are not 20 minutes long! And there are some things that you have to focus on until you complete the task, or you won’t be allowed to move on to the next thing. I think you have the wrong impression about what changes kids actually find challenging in kindergarten and beyond. Most teachers would much rather have students who are able to maintain focus until a task is complete than students who can’t handle maintaining focus for more than ten minutes because they were never allowed to during crucial developmental phases. At any rate, if we know that a practice is not the best for developing brains, it makes no sense to introduce it earlier. It makes sense to delay it as much as possible.
 
All I can say to that is, if it happens, it happens. Seems pretty unlikely though.
 
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