Does a spoonful of sugar help the horrible feeling of betrayal go down too, Mary?
My stomach is churning from the guilt. I couldn’t even look her in the eye this morning. Can she sense the potential betrayal?
We are considering leaving the daycare lady who has cared for our son for over three years and for our daughter for over one year and instead hiring a nanny. This potential change is not our daycare lady’s fault. We desire a flexibility that daycare cannot provide, most significantly wanting my son to be able to attend a half-day preschool program. I previously wrote about that logistical nightmare here on LWM.
We’re still not certain about the nanny thing. For one, a nanny is more expensive than daycare. Is the added flexibility worth the money? Sure she’d do “light cleaning,” but there’s a lot less “light cleaning” to do when no one is home during the day. There’s also the issue of finding someone I would trust, but I had that same concern with daycare and found someone great. I’m sure that if I decide I want a nanny I’ll be able to find a good one. I actually have a reference for someone already although someone else will probably snatch her up while I wallow in indecision. Additionally, I don’t know if I want the responsibility of managing a person. Issues like taxes and liability insurance are things I don’t need to think about with daycare.
Of all the cost is probably the biggest deterrent, but my next biggest concern is the guilt I’d feel having to leave my current childcare provider. She and her sons (one grade school aged and one in high school) have been like family to my kids, particularly my boy. Enrollment over our three years there has gone up and down, so at times it’s just been my kids with one or two others. My kids have been the constants. Our lives have been intertwined with that daycare. It’s where my kids spend 50 hours each week. Walking away feels significant. I can’t even begin to think how I would tell our daycare lady that we are switching to a nanny. Just writing about this is making me tear up. It would be like firing a member of the family.
And it’s not just her. How will my son transition away from being at daycare and seeing his friends? He still doesn’t really understand schedules, so the first day or two of staying at home with a nanny would probably be fine, but then I’m sure he’d ask about when he’s going back to daycare. A major motivation for this potential change is to let my kid go to preschool where he can be with other kids his own age, so hopefully that would make up for leaving his other friends behind.
I should also consider the girl. It’s easy to think that since she’s too young to articulate her objection that she’d be fine with whatever decision we make. That’s not necessarily true. When my daughter was younger she was very clingy to me. Whether she was being left with a grandparent, a friend, a babysitter or—for a while—even her dad, she would cry when she realized I was going and would be inconsolable for at least 10 minutes after I was gone. The only place that never happened was daycare. She always has huge smiles for our daycare lady. How would she do in the new situation?
Have you ever broken up with a childcare provider? How did everyone cope? Other than the cost and feelings of betrayal are there other things I should be considering in the decision to switch from daycare to a nanny?
Kim Z. Dale is an over-educated IT project manager and occasional playwright. She has a 3 year-old son AJ, 1 year-old daughter Lola, and more ambition than time. Coffee is her best friend, although she’s fond of her husband too. You can find her on Twitter @observacious
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Oh I don’t envy you this. At all.
We have a nanny (and love her & the flexibility we’ve found…along with a host of other incredible things we never even considered when hiring a nanny) and while it’s not even a consideration for us yet, I do wonder what it will be like when we have to say to her one day: we don’t need you anymore. Because it feels somehow different dealing with a “personality” than a “center”.
I do think, however, she probably will understand that your reasons for leaving there are incredible for those kids she’s come to love. It’s tough, for everyone, but just that you’re putting the thought into it alone shows that you’re making the best choices for your family.
mrshiggison recently posted..Did I Ever Tell You…
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Yeah. Even if we stay it seems weird to think that someday my kids will outgrow daycare. (That’s weird to think about both from the firing of a care provider perspective as well as the”OMG my babies are going to grow up!” anxiety.)
Twitter: observacious
Follow-up:
This weekend we went to a playground. It wasn’t even a playground in the neighborhood but a big one a few miles away. Our daycare lady and her family happened to be there. My son and her youngest son were delighted to see each other. My daughter tried desperately to keep up. DCL’s teenage son and husband played with the kids, even when doing so caused them to get completely soaked in the water feature. The kids looked at a mother duck leading her ducklings and pointed out turtles to each other. The next morning my son was still talking about all the fun he had.
I think the nanny option is losing from guilt alone, but I’d still love your thoughts!
Twitter: observacious
If you do decide to transition away from DCL, my advice is to give lots of notice to her. If your children are her constant “clients” so to speak, you do not want to leave her high and dry financially. She’ll want time to find other families.
As far as your guilt: You make it very clear here that it’s not about her. You just need to do that in a conversation, maybe over coffee or a beer. You are friends with these people, and that’s a GOOD THING.
In the end, you will do what is best for your children. We have a nanny this summer, and she has been a boon to our family. But she’s a short-term solution, because my kids will be in full-time school in the fall (and the 18 month old will go back to his daycare). Good luck, Kim!
red pen mama recently posted..Friends with Benefits
We left our daycare provider in May and it was really difficult for me to tell her. She took it in stride though — she knows that it’s one of those things — kids come and go. That didn’t make it any easier though.
I currently have a recent college graduate coming a few hours a day and my trio will start full-day preschool in the fall. This has been a better situation for us overall and I’m glad I went through with the change, despite my reservations.
Hang in there!
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We had a period of time we had no care. I found an amazing woman online, who was pregnant. Her 5 year old went to school half day and she was looking for a kid to watch for a few months and make some money before her baby was due. It worked out for us because I had to go back to work and we had not yet secured care (impossible to do here). I thought I was buying us time, an additional 6 months, to look.
She was amazing. We loved her. My daughter LOVED her. She was the first care giver my daughter had that wasn’t me (save some babysitting). Her daughter was amazing. Everly took her first steps there. The whole thing was perfect.
Until 3 weeks after my daughter started, and we got a call from THE centre we wanted. A literal miracle. A wait list we’d been on for 21 months. And they had a spot for June 1, and Everly had only started with this woman on April 15.
I was GUTTED. I knew I had to take the spot. I would never get another chance at the centre if I didn’t. It pained me. I wanted to pay her and the centre both, so they would hold her spot and she could stay where she was for 6 months but, obviously shelling out $2500 a month to curb my sadness made no sense.
It was a horribly difficult thing to do. There were a lot of tears. In the end, we’re still friends with the care giver, and see them from time to time. We stay connected and we are better for having taken the spot.
It’s never easy. It’s emotional. But at the end of the day, you can only do what is best for your family, all factors in. You might have to sacrifice something to gain something and, she would surely understand.
Good luck!
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We had to semi-break up with our DCL. She watched my son full-time from 3 months to 3 years old. At 3 years we sent him to preschool 3 days a week at a large center. We told her when he was 4 he would be full-time pre-k at the center. Well … when we got the summer schedule from my son’s preschool, we found out that field trip day was Thursday and every Tuesday they were taking the kids to the local movie theater; the two days my son did not attend school. We decided to take him out of daycare and enroll him full-time at school in June. It was hard to tell her we would be removing him 3 months early (we did give her 4 weeks notice though). His last day there were a lot of tears (from DCL and me, not my son!) My daughter still goes to DCL and will for another year, until she is 3, so my son still sees her when we pick up my daughter. I know it will be hard, just make sure you give her plenty of notice because it does sound like you are her main source of income. I truly believe that once kids are pre-school age they just do better in a class with kids their same age. My son has learned so so much at his new school, and is much less shy around other kids his same age and makes friends more easily. I love our DCL (that is why my daughter still goes there), but it may be in your son’s best interest to move on to school, and it sounds like getting a nanny is the way to make that happen for you. Good luck!