Daycare selection can be incredibly overwhelming, even after a "final" decision has been made. How do you know it is the best fit for your child? For your family? For your schedule? M is currently with an in-home daycare provider that he adores and we love that he loves her! However, her schedule is no longer conducive to ours. What do we do? Take unpaid days of leave to cover the multitude of unpaid vacation days she takes? Send our child away overnight to my parents' home? Pawn him off on a neighbor? The alternatives seem ridiculous.
I believe in paid vacation for our sitter and the occasional sick day. In fact in her contract she has the same number of paid days as I do as a teacher. I fully support this and paying her to take days like Thanksgiving and Christmas off. It is the unpaid days I am struggling with. It is considerate of her not to charge for these days, but then what do I do with my child? I am barely being given one months notice and she has taken close to 10 unpaid days this school year (not including her paid vacation days and her sick days - totaling close to 12 days). When I discussed with her the number of days she closes on average a school year back in August I was told that she might close two or three times for illness and take vacation days around the holidays. Ultimately she saves her vacation time for the summer (when M is home with me.) Clearly this is not what is happening. I was not told that unpaid days were an option for her or that she would be taking this many days off. This is a huge inconvenience and I am not sure how to handle the situation.
If I am not going to switch M to a new sitter or center, then I guess I should request a calendar of her planned days at the start of the school year so that I have plenty of time to accommodate her schedule. But my question to you... When does it become too much? When do I switch to a new place for M? I am not blessed with family close by or back-up childcare so I really need a reliable sitter. Thoughts? Are my expectations (either way) unreasonable?
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Well, our unreliable daycare provider - Caterpillar Corner of Greencastle, PA (Susanne Sandino) - dropped us suddenly due to poor communication with her spouse about their finances. Apparently she did not clear my maternity leave (5 months) with her husband and how this would effect them financially. She chose Facebook messaging me while I was out of the country as the most professional way of telling me she could not care for M in the coming school year. Needless to say it was a blessing in disguise! While we were aware of a number of violations in her home, we have been made aware of quite a bit more since. We have found a new and fabulous babysitter near our home with a work ethic more on par with us. Eric and I really had to put our faith in the Lord during this challenging time, but we are so glad that we went through what we did to find our current sitter.
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