Socorro. Have her come in the house and clean also as you leave and your kid is asleep. It will be less than $275 a month I can assure you. Your kid will be speaking Spanish better than you in NO TIME, and your house will be squeaky clean. Two birds. One stone.
MESSAGE TO CHURCH (no D&D move intended!!! - just me on soapbox): This is clearly a repeated need in EVERY community. There needs to be affordable childcare. Why don't we chill with the gold-plated temples and purchase of sports arenas and see if we can pool funds and efforts to help resolve this issue for other people? Seems like kind of a Jesus thing to do.
My church runs a preschool, and we use it for our son. My wife stayed home for his first year, and then he went to that daycare for 2 years, about 35 hours/week. We paid about $850/month. This year my wife is working part time, so he'll be there only 20 hours/week, part of that time is in the preschool. Its a tough call. I wouldn't even say a family member is always better. It truly depends on the facility. MadMax, I totally agree. That is true outreach.
148/week for my two year old son;price includes meals. Absolutely love the place and never had any problems. They have a solid curriculum, nice teachers, turnover seems ok. I think the other places we looked at were in the general price range as well and all seemed to be solid facilities. Maybe we were lucky.
I hear ya, Rokkit - we had the same problem. My wife wanted to go back to work as a teacher (since that is what her degree is in) but she couldn't get a position as all the school systems around where we lived didn't do a lot of hiring (due to the economy and tight budgets). The few new teachers that did get hired were either straight out of college or knew someone (it always seems to be political when it comes to getting a teaching job). I need her to bring in some type of income, so she is working 15 hours a week at a local daycare (we live in TN) and the days that she works (which is only 2), my mom watches our son (he is now 7 and a half months old) for free. But what we were going to do if my wife had gotten a full-time teaching job was to have a lady from our church watch him for $25 a day or $125 a week which is roughly $500 a month. So, I would recommend finding someone at your church that you know and trust and would be good with babies/infants. Negotiate with them and see what they would be willing to charge you. For God's sakes, don't go somewhere that would charge you $275 a week! Goddayum that is outrageous!!
If you swing by your local Home Depot there are usually a few dudes hanging out who will watch your kids -- cheap.
I got really lucky and got promoted a week before my kid was born. Beforehand I was totally freaked about the prospect of daycare. Esp in NYC where its like 10K a semester minimum. Of course now we have another on the way so its unlikely my wife goes back to work for awhile. She is, however, on the board of directors of two non-profits.
