For a lot of parents, daycare is a must-have. Some families have a stay at home mom or dad to help take care of the kid(s). Some families have other family members nearby to help take care of the kid(s). However, for most families with two working parents, daycare will become an added expense once baby is here (or after maternity and paternity leave ends).
My husband and I both work full time, and with our current lifestyle we did not think it would be possible for one of us to be a stay at home parent. And honestly, I don’t think I would have done well being a stay at home mom. I respect all SAHMs (or SAHDs) as it is a full time job caring for your baby. I would be stressed out and overthinking (more than I already am) about whether or not I’m teaching my daughter what she needs to learn. While I don’t want to focus too much on my daughter hitting milestones, it would worry me being a SAHM and wondering if she’s keeping up with other kids are learning in school. And then there’s the socializing—I would need to find opportunities for her to interact with other kids so that she’s also growing in a social setting. Further, I like my job and I like what I do. I like the routine of a day job, whereas a SAHM/SAHD is a full time 24/7 job. I like to be able to work another part of my brain. I also think it’s nice for me to have another purpose/ identity in life, in addition to being a mom. Heck, I wouldn’t be the Accounting Momma if I didn’t have a job in accounting! My husband and I are both still young enough in our careers where neither of us want to take a step back from career growth opportunities. As such, we both decided that we would continue to work full-time with our daughter, and we would find childcare for her while we were at work.
While we both have our parents nearby (who are retired) we did not want to ask them to provide us childcare 5 days a week for 8+ hours a day. We feel that daily childcare would take away the “non-work” time that we/ our daughter would spend with them. I want our daughter to have a relationship with her grandparents outside of what-would-be required childcare time. In addition, we did not want it to feel like our parents were “working for us”. While I understand that every family’s situation is unique, this was just the way we personally felt about our childcare situation. Therefore, we pursued the route of daycare full-time for our daughter.
Picking a daycare can be a daunting task. Daycare means less time with your child, and it’s hard to think about having to pay a stranger to care for your child (while you presumably work to make said money to pay the childcare provider—it’s a circle of irony). I had heard the rumors about locking in a daycare early as spots fill up quickly, which is why I started my daycare selection process as soon as I hit 12 weeks (ok, not that early, as that was right in the midst of the holidays, but definitely shortly into the new year, with a due date of late June). Further, we had the expectation that our daughter would start daycare around 6 months of age (i.e., in January of the following year). So I was looking at daycares about 12 months before her anticipated start date. Yes, I am a Type A planner, but yes, this was way too early to begin looking – it was by no means necessary. But do I regret it? No, not really. I wanted to get the daycare selection process completed before my daughter was here. I did not want to be worrying about it after she arrived or during the panic time of returning to work. I just wanted all of my ducks in a row before baby came.
To start, I made an excel file. As an Accounting Momma, I love a good excel file! I use excel daily as part of my job, and will use excel personally for all of my trip planning, etc. The first step was to create a master summary tab within my excel file to list out all of the daycares near me. I also included columns of data for: home-based vs center-based provider, location (distance in miles and minutes), contact information (phone/email), CA license check (including if any citations/complaints), tuition price (+ annualized (to compare apples to apples with other daycare providers)), additional fees (if any), stars/review rating (Yelp and Google), pre-tour notes (any thoughts from their website or reviews), tour date and time, post-tour notes, pros, cons, consider this daycare provider?, and additional notes. Also for ease, this table can be created on individual tabs (one for each daycare provider) and then linked back to the summary tab (so any edits made on the individual daycare provider’s tab will be updated on the summary tab). The summary tab will provide a clean summarized version of all of the daycare providers, which allows filtering of the info (in case you only wanted to compare home-based daycares, or you wanted to filter tuition lowest to highest). Make the summary tab your own, and tailor it to your liking, so that it’s easy to read/leverage when discussing which daycare provider to go with.
To take a step back, as part of creating the excel file, I had to do a lot of research to find daycares to even consider. I scoured the internet including Google, Yelp and Facebook to find daycares in my area. I’m part of a neighborhood daycare Facebook group that includes multiple daycare providers advertising their services – this was very helpful in getting a complete list of daycares (especially home-based daycare providers, as most home-based daycares do not have an individual website). One recommendation I have is to check with your work to see if they have any perks for childcare. For example, my company had a discount related to a couple daycares in the area (unfortunately, I don’t live near my company’s office, so the discounts weren’t applicable to me). But this can be a good way to help save a little bit of money, if you work for a company with good benefits.
Now, from your completed master summary tab you can weed out potential daycare providers already — maybe you only wants to look at home-based daycares, or you will only accept daycares within 15 minutes of your house. I think having a list of 3-5 daycares to tour is plenty, and will give you enough options to choose from. Next comes the fun part of TOURING the daycares! This involves setting up appointments with the daycare providers and fitting it into your schedule. Some daycare providers prefer certain times as the tour appointments for center-based daycares will typically be scheduled while daycare is in session. Compared to tour appointments for home-based daycares, which will typically be scheduled after daycare is over for the day. Further, I made a Word document with a list of all of the questions I wanted to ask the daycare provider during the tour (and I brought a notepad with me to take notes). This was very helpful in making sure I asked all of the right questions and got all of the responses I needed to feel comfortable with a daycare provider.
This brings up one of the big questions around selection of a daycare provider — home-based or center-based? There are definitely pros and cons to both types of daycare providers and it is important that you select what’s best for you and your family. Some things to consider when selecting between these two types of daycare providers include: # of child care providers, teachers/curriculum, licensing, location, hours of operation, cleanliness and cost. Again, there are positives and negatives to both of these types of daycare providers, but I will share below the debits (pros) and credits (cons) of the daycare we selected for our daughter.
After touring 7 daycares (5 center-based and 2 home-based), we decided on a home-based daycare for our daughter.
- Debit #1 - Location: My daughter’s daycare is located 5 minutes from our house in a nearby shopping center that we frequent often. The proximity of the daycare to our house was a big consideration for my husband and I as we both primarily work from home, so we wanted to select a daycare that was close to our house.
- Debit #2 - Number of Providers: Being a center-based daycare, there are multiple teachers per classroom, and there are always subs available for when a teacher calls out sick/ takes time off. This helps to provide more reliability to us for taking our daughter to daycare. We do not have to worry about scrambling last minute to find a backup child care provider if her teachers are sick, as we’re still able to take her to daycare. In addition, there are usually better teacher to student ratios at a center-based daycare compared to a home-based daycare. My daughter’s class has a ratio of 1 teacher to 4 students, which means she has been able to get more specialized attention.
- Debit #3 - Age-Based Classes: At a center-based daycare, my daughter is in a classroom with kids her age. For example, she started in the Infant class which is for kids from ~6 weeks - 12 months, but since she’s turned 1 she has moved up to the next class which is for kids from ~1 year old - 2 years old. This allows our daughter to be part of age-appropriate curriculum while interacting with kids who are in the same stage of growing up as her. This is compared to a home-based daycare where there are usually a mix of ages (from infant to 5/6 years old) and less structure around curriculum.
- Credit #1 - Cost: While it is no surprise that daycare is expensive, center-based daycare providers are typically more expensive than home-based daycare providers. Of the daycares that we looked at, it was more common for center-based daycares to cost more. I think the range for home-based daycare was ~$16k-$20k/ year vs center-based daycare was ~$20k-$25k/ year.
- Credit #2 - Illness: This credit could be applied to both home-based and center-based daycares, but as our daughter has only experienced center-based daycare I can only speak to that. However, from a health perspective, once our daughter started daycare she did get sick more often. It was ~one day a month for the first 3 or 4 months where she was sent home for having a fever. Again, this could happen at a home-based daycare, but there are more children at a center-based daycare which could be a contributing factor. As a silver lining, our daughter’s immune system is only getting stronger as she battles all of the new germs of daycare. This did improve once summertime came, but it’s an ongoing battle with babies and germs.
We have loved the center-based daycare that we selected for our daughter. She has loved it since she started there – she didn’t even cry when we dropped her off on the first day (it was me that was bawling!). The daycare also has an app where they update us throughout the day on what she’s been doing, eating, etc. (+ pictures). They have excellent communication, which was also a big consideration for us when selecting a daycare provider. We’ve been happy with our selection of daycares since starting our daughter there at the beginning of this year. We look forward to continue watching our daughter learn and grow at her daycare!
Overall, there is no wrong choice, whether you go with a home-based or center-based daycare provider, or if you go another route, such as a nanny (or nanny sharing) or being a stay at home parent. Do what is best for you and your family! <3