Agreed, as I'm sure most do. The daycare is owned by my employer, and is just a few minutes' walk away. So that helps.
I'm not going to lie, its hard at first, but you can do it. Do you have a written budget that you keep every month? If not, start doing that immediately. Give it a three months trial and your'll see that It will help you tremendously. Track every dollar you spend, and you'll quickly see where you can cut costs. For those who smoke...if you give up smoking for the nine months you're pregnant, consider putting JUST the amount of 1 pack a day into a good 529 college fund. If you never take smoking back up - and continue putting Just that pack-a-day amount into the fund until your child goes off to college - you'll have $70,000 saved for their college.
Yeah I'm gonna put something together this weekend to help with that. If I cut out the alcohol and going out to eat that will help. Other than that, it's hard to tell where we can make cutbacks. We aren't exactly high-spenders - at least, I don't think we are.
I stayed at home the first year my son was born, then we qualified for assistance with Daycare through a Texas program that is privately funded, so when I started working again we only ended up paying about $300 a month for daycare. It was brutally hard at first to drop off my boy there and leave him, but you get used to it and so do they. I hate that other people have to raise him during the day, but we just don't have a choice.
Neither do we...which is why we changed daycares after a week when my son first started. I dropped him off one day and the infant room teacher just had her head down and was bouncing one baby in a bouncer with her foot while the other babies were in their cribs. I could tell she didn't want to be there, and we were out the next day. Our son has been at his current daycare ever since, so over 5 years now. Our daughter has been there for over 2 years. They both love it there, and the teachers and the daycare director is great. They recently had Pre-K Graduation for my son and his classmates, and the director was tearing up throughout the event. The kids mean the world to her... So my point being, there are good daycares and bad daycares. The good daycares have teachers who DO care about the kids. If you pick a bad daycare, don't be afraid to leave it.
I posted this in the SXSW 2015 thread but thought I would re-post here. A comedian performing at SXSW told this joke. I felt it was applicable to this thread.
This sounds exactly like my ex gf's little 3yr old. He was terrible, and she let him do anything he wanted with no consequences. Oh, if it is 2 am and he wakes up and wants a popsicle, HE GOT IT!! So many times we were in the middle of "our time" and he would wake up just crying like crazy and she would go sleep in his bed, leaving me for the rest of the night. I wanted to step in countless times and set that little dude straight but that wasnt my place. Safe to say when we split, I had some relief and used that as one of the reasons to get over her. Three's are bad
I don't look at it as them raising them. They help raise them but I really look at it as they are learning early to respect authority that isn't family. Also, they will see how other children interact with authority and what is right and wrong. They also get to socialize with other children their age and create valuable social skills that they will need throughout life. I don't like when others hate on daycare. I do see both sides but I am glad my boy is not attached at the hip to my wife or I and has his own independence and soothing abilities thanks to not being around us 24/7. Obviously, not all kids that stay at home are attached to the mother or father but most I know are. It is also true that not all daycares/in-home daycares do not care about children and are considered "strangers" as Nook put it. Anyways, I really don't want to get into this debate so I will just see myself out.
Yeah, it is funny. Especially because starting around 5 all kids are going to be "raised by other people" until they are adults. So...sure, act like daycare or a nanny is for bad parents.
Here it is really normal for children to go to daycare. When i look at all my friends who haev children they all go to daycare (I do have to say that all my friends have either a MSc or a PhD so it might be different for people with a lower education). Most of my friends stay one day at home during the week. My 2 daughters go to day care 3 days in the week (one day I stay at home and one day my wife stays home). I think that the first year there is no advantage for the child to go to a day care. But after that they learn a lot of social skills, and my oldest daughter (almost 3) loves it.She has made some great friends on the daycare. Also for the poster saying that the teachers do not care for the children. The regular teachers of my daughters love them. And my daughters also love the teachers. Of course some teachers might not be that good. But many of the teachers I have met really deeply care for the children.
No one has said anything stupid about our daughter, but its early - she's only 7 months old. Plus it takes a lot for my wife and I to be offended - so I doubt it will ever happen. With respect to childcare, we have a nanny come to our house for 45-50 hours a week. We thought about daycare but all of our friends convinced us to go the nanny route as they get sick a lot less. I was concerned about less social interactions, but there is a huge park across from our home, and we hired a nanny that has a lot of nanny friends in the area - so they have their own playgroup so that all of the kids have friends and spend time with each other. Not super important now as she's still very young - but as she ages I think this will be critical. Our nanny just got married, so fingers crossed she doesn't want her own kids for the next 5-6 years.
Let me clarify, I wasn't implying that other people aren't suited to "raise" my kid, or that it is bad for them. I just meant its kind of freaky that first time you hand them over because you don't really know whats going to happen, theres a lack of control, and obviously its a big chunk of the day you're not with them while they are very young. Fortunately when we first put him in daycare his teacher there was an older lady and she was so good with him that we didn't dare move him away from her until it was time for him to graduate from her class. At this point I'd much rather have him in a structured environment with a lot of kids his own age than sitting at home with me. Might as well get them assimilated early.
It's one of many huge parenting debates, but daycare can be fine _if it's a good one_. We had our son in a private home for his first two years, but she wanted to go back to work and we didn't know anyone else to take him. He loves the Montessori preschool we found. When we go back to school this coming week, we'll have his little sister in the baby room. It depends what your jobs are; some couples can't afford to have one stay home with the kids. Even with the daycare expenses, we are better off keeping my job, which has a steady salary and the entire family's health insurance. My mom moved to the same town and a house five minutes away - thank goodness, so we have a backup in case of sick kids or other issues, and for evenings when we both have to work. Again, no worries about my three-year-old; he loves it. Hopefully the little one will assimilate well. She seems to prefer her few favorite people holding her. There are lots of reasons why quitting my job isn't even an option; it's hard to get these positions, it's the only reason we moved to this town in the first place, and honestly I do better if I get away from the kids for part of the day. Hopefully that doesn't make me a bad mama, but I like to have someone to trade off with. I have the utmost respect for women that do nothing but the kid thing all day, 24/7. Because I get to go to work which is like a break in comparison. I usually have Fridays off to spend with the kids. And even with both incomes we're having to pinch pennies... not to mention the massive debt we're trying to get out of, and issues with his family where we end up helping them even though we shouldn't be. Kids are expensive. No lie. But it's worth just winging it if you have to. You will build these close relationships that you will have the rest of your life, and help the next generation of humanity get started. Pretty important.
As other parents of twins will concur, we get a LOT of dumb things said to us. Mainly...."are they twins?" I know most people are just saying it to make conversation, but sometimes I really want to answer back with a sarcastic "DO YA THINK SO???" But I'm always nice and reply with my standard comeback template of "yup, double trouble!" It's also funny hearing other people's flawed theories about how they can supposedly tell them apart. "This one's eyes are darker." Yeah, no they're not. "This one looks like he's heavier." Nope, they both weigh exactly 31.4 pounds. "This one's face looks different." Nope, they identical twins.
My 3-year old son has PKU (a rare metabolic disorder), and people are always "What's wrong with him? Why can't he eat that?" I know what they mean, but never ask someone "What's wrong with" their kid. Seriously. My wife and I have been fortunate to have very flexible employers, allowing us to stagger our work schedules and avoid daycare (it's the cost that I wanted to avoid most of all). However, we've seen a down side as the other kids his age in our neighborhood seem to be more comfortable socially (the majority go to some form of daycare). So we're starting a twice-a-week daycare program this fall to see if we can help with that. He's functional in social settings, but not as comfortable as I'd like him to be. As far as choosing not to name or find out gender until birth...I don't really care what anybody else does with their kid, but my wife and I had a stillborn little girl at full term almost five years ago. Let me tell you, the brief interactions I had with her throughout the pregnancy (responding to my voice, talking to her, watching her move around) were much richer because I felt like she already had an identity. I think I would have regretted it had we not had a name to go with the experience...what happened to us is obviously very rare, but whenever someone tells me that they're waiting to name the child or find out gender until birth, a very small part of me worries/hopes that they don't have a similar experience. But, to each their own.
Thanks, I like that. I take my kids on my trips, and I'll usually get that kind of criticism, which I think is complete bs. When I was a kid, I'd go to France every few years. I don't remember all the trips, but I know when I went when I was 9, I remembered the trip I'd taken as a 6 year old, and so on. Just because you can't remember events from your youth doesn't mean it didn't have a formative and lasting impact. Mine are boy-girl twins, and the funniest one is that once a person establishes that they're twins, they'll ask "So, are they identical?"
