During this past holiday weekend, a neighbor and I were talking about kid care. She works as a paralegal downtown. She feels guilty about having her 6 yr old in full-time daycare during the summer - when some of his friends are staying with grandparents, or parents. She was telling me how guilty she feels dropping him and his 3 yr old little sister off in the morning to stay there ALL DAY LONG. And she was lamenting about how much her daycare (which is one of the nicest in the areas) costs her and her husband.
I think it’s a pretty common guilt of working moms. We feel bad dropping our kiddos off at the same old place day after day and we wonder why daycare costs so much.
So, I told her about my own experience with daycare:
We were happy with our daycare which was very convenient to where we live. The staff was amazing and our kiddos LOVED it there. They loved their teachers and made some very good friends. In the summertime, they were well entertained with a ton of field trips and activities. It was very routine and dependable which made it comfortable for us all.
Of course, that didn’t stop the kiddos from complaining that they were “bored.” They gave me the exact same guilt trip (which I accepted EVERY time!) about how some of their friends weren’t going to daycare during the summer. I would imagine a much better life for my kids - one that involved sleeping in and lazy pancake mornings during the summertime (instead of being up and at daycare bright and early). I just KNEW that the stay-at-home kids were enjoying a more peaceful existence because their mothers were nurturing them all day, every day - instead of dropping them off with a change of clothes and a towel for “Splash Day.”
Okay - let me cut to the chase: it’s not true (at least for my family).
Once I had the opportunity to pull my kiddos out of daycare for a summer - I JUMPED at the chance. Thanks to a stint of working from home, I had my kiddos home one summer. It was really within about three weeks (maybe shorter) that my kiddos started asking me when they could go back to their friends and teachers at daycare. It was a rude awakening for me.
As I told my neighbor, there are options in child care that don’t involve daycare (or grandparent care). Once our children got older, they needed more help with their homework projects and also had developed some after school sport activities that had impossibly early evening practices. We made arrangements with a neighbor’s college-age daughter (who had a stellar driving record) to watch our kids every afternoon, help them with their homework and drop them off at their practices.
This arrangement proved to be VERY effective very quickly and we all grew very spoiled to this arrangement and continued it during the summer months (which also meant providing additional spending money so that our kids would still enjoy some field trips outside of the house).
As I told my neighbor, this is the ultimate in luxury kid care, but you pay an absolute premium for it. There are no group rates for any activity. On the other hand, my kids enjoy the lazy summer days and every possible camp (okay, so much for lazy), as if I were a stay-at-home mom. This gives me a good sense of satisfaction, but I pay dearly for it.
The moment I shared how much we pay for this personalized kid care with my neighbor, she was suddenly not feeling nearly as ripped off by her super expensive daycare. If anything, (I hope) she felt a superior about how much better they are at managing their money.
I admit, this form of kid care is expensive, but not feeling guilty and knowing that my kiddos are safe and having a great summer make it worth every penny.
By the way - the main lesson I learned from that summer of staying home was that as long as the parents are happy, kids are happy. They really do pick up clues about how to feel from us. I didn’t enjoy my time working from home - so neither did my kids. Now that I’m back in a corporate office environment, they couldn’t be happier.
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