Pet peeve - Articles on choosing a day care centre

Although I really like their magazine, I am always bothered by articles like this recent one from Today's Parent: 10 Things Your Daycare May Not Tell You.

Well-intentioned, yes, and true, it provides valuable information. But I find it frustrating.  And here's why:

To begin, the idea of 'carefully selecting' the right child care is difficult to comprehend. For many families who are living in cities with very limited child care spaces, who have spent months, even years, on wait lists for a spot in regulated child care centres, "choosing" the right day care centre for your child is not really an option.  As your maternity leave nears its end, after months of desperately searching for any day care centre with an opening, most families excitedly accept and register their child at the child care centre which has granted them a spot.  

Please don't make me feel guilty about not having performed a whole research, audition and selection procedure.

I was also bothered by the concern for poor communication between the parents and the child care staff.  I don't know about you, but the end-of-day-day-care-pick-up-rush-home-to-make-dinner time is my least favourite time of day.  The child care centre is a flurry of activity as most parents arrive at about the same time, the children are crazy or clingy or excitedly telling me about their day, and I have three different rooms to visit to pick-up three different children.  

I, for one, am certainly not in the right state of mind for a detailed delineation of my child's day.  Our centre has used daily or weekly logs at different times, particularly for the infants and toddlers.  But let's be honest, the routine is fairly consistent day-to-day, and the paper logs are just another piece of paper junk I 
need to bring home and recycle.  I'm confident that any major issues will be brought to my attention.  

Please don't add to my guilt by making me feel as though I must actively interrogate the staff each day.

I'm fortunate, I guess, but I truly believe that my kids are being cared for by qualified and caring staff in a high quality centre.

Modernizing Child Care

My responses to the Government of Ontario's discussion paper: Modernizing Child Care in Ontario: Sharing Conversations, Strengthening Partnerships, Working Together


To the Ministry of Education, Early Years Division:


As a working mother with three young children, child care issues have occupied a significant amount of my conscious thoughts for the last 5 years. While working full-time, our children have been cared for in several different settings: licensed home care, not-for-profit child care centre, and in our home by a live-out caregiver. Although I know I am not unique, I believe that our family experiences in these different child care settings give me some grounding from which to participate in your conversations about the modernization of child care. I welcome the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions, with reference to your discussion paper Modernizing Child Care in Ontario: Sharing Conversations, Strengthening Partnerships, Working Together.

Although I am unable to specifically address each of the questions posed for discussion, I offer the following comments to several of the main issues presented.

Funding
I believe that child care options should be uniformly affordable to all parents who require such services. In order to accomplish this, funding must match the demand, and access to subsidies should be increased.

Because the current system does not meet the demand, what seems to exist is a mutli-tiered child care system: only families who can secure a spot within, and afford the high costs of child care centres are able to reap the benefits of fully regulated, high quality child care. Funding must be secure and stable, and flexible so that both child care centres, and home-based child care each receive adequate funding to provide high quality care adapted to their different needs.

All families who require full-time child care should have access to affordable, high quality early learning child care programs. While some families may choose home care, I believe that all children should be exposed to early education environments, such as Ontario Early Years Centres. Funding to Early Years Centres and Best Start programs should continue so that even home-based child care providers are able to benefit and provide quality early education to children.

Consideration should also be made so that funding can accommodate variations from the standard work-day requirements for child care. Families have many different child care needs such as part-time care, non-traditional working hours, and no requirement for child care during certain periods of the year (e.g. summers off for teachers, seasonal work).

There may be merit in considering improved and set-minimum wages for child care workers. When searching for child care for our daughters, I remember feeling confronted with the dilemma of wanting child care costs to be affordable and manageable to our budget, while realising that someone who is caring for my children should be well paid.

Schools-First Child Care Policy and Community Needs
It seems intuitive to me that child care should be available within the school environment. Regardless of the age of the child, child care is about more than child-minding or baby-sitting. Even for young children, child care should be provided in an environment which supports learning and development. To me, a school is the ideal place for this.

Although there may be a need for community-based child care in limited situations, from a parent’s perspective, having child care options available within the school is essential. Even though my 2.5 year old does not ‘need’ to be in a school-based child care centre, having her within the school is of immeasurable convenience since our family also includes a 4 and 6 year old who attend school. It also provides for an easier transition for the child when ‘graduating’ from full-day child care to school.

In addition, schools are often not only sites for education, but community hubs. In cases where space or facilities prevent the inclusion of child care in schools, child care options, including Early Years, should be made available in adjacent or associated recreation or community centres.

Program Quality
Currently endorsed programming frameworks (e.g. Early Learning for Every Child Today, (ELECT)) or curriculums should be supported by the Ministry. Child care providers should show evidence of following these frameworks as contingency to licensure in order to ensure that children are exposed to developmentally appropriate, play-based and inquiry-based learning.

Child care providers should be recognised as professionals. By providing child care workers with adequate pay, benefits, training opportunities, and positive, professional relationships, it is more likely that high quality employees will be attracted and retained to the child care discipline.

In order for the government to help parents make choices about care, it must first acknowledge that as the system currently stands, many families are unable to make any real choices about child care. When child care options are unavailable because of cost limitations or long wait lists, families feel pressured to take whatever child care option becomes available.

Having been placed on child care centre wait lists, I feel that it would be of benefit to many families if there were a standardised procedure/protocol for wait list management. Although I cannot imagine the complexity of figuring out wait list priority versus requested start dates, I don’t really have any idea how wait lists are managed or if there is even any consistency between institutions in their wait list policies. Parents should be made aware of how the child care centres wait list system works so that we can understand and feel like a part of the process.

Child Care Standards
There should be harmonization in requirements for health, safety and quality for all avenues of child care: whether it is in a child care centre, in an external home or within the family’s home. Having utilised each of these options for the care of my children, I have witnessed first-hand the vast differences in quality and health/safety standards between these different settings.

There should be a higher level of accountability for home-based care with minimum standards for safety, health and early learning. In-home licensed child care is one means of accomplishing this; I speak from experience to say that it makes parents feel safer to know that there is some body overseeing the care of children in a stranger’s home. But for families using in-home child care with a live-in or live-out nanny, there is no accountability, and parents are left to rely on their instinct or gut-feeling, and the extra stress of wondering how well their children are actually being cared for.

While it is impractical to have all home-care settings licensed, standards could be met by either requiring home-based child care to be affiliated with a licensed child care organisation (e.g. Wee Watch), or require that all (non-family) child care providers be individually licensed.

In an ideal world, professional development in early child learning, first aid, and child discipline should be required and standardised for all child care providers. This could be attained through licensing of individual child care workers. After all, plumbers and electricians are licensed; shouldn’t individuals caring for our children also be required to meet a standard?

Finally, for home-based child care programs to meet the same standards for safety and learning environments as licensed child care centres, home-based programs must be fully supported to do so.

Middle Childhood Strategy
I’m in full support of the Middle Childhood Strategy. After-school care for 6-12 year olds should be about more than homework and free play. It presents an opportunity for children to learn and develop additional skills.

Accountability
In addition to hours, fees and wages, child care operators should be required to report of wait list statistics, such as number of families on the wait list and the time spent on the wait list.

Thank you for the chance to share my thoughts and feedback on the important issue of caring for our children. It’s recently occurred to me that parents with young children are the ones most affected by child care policies, but we are often feel too busy balancing our careers with raising our families to make the time to make our opinions known. I am grateful for this opportunity to help make a difference.

Kind regards,
Average Working Mom

Success!!!

There are spots for Youngest and Middle at our Child Care centre of choice! (yeah!)

They start next week.(so soon!)

Still no spot for Oldest, but Day Care Administrator says she'll keep us posted. (mild optimism.)

Lots of things to figure out (?):

1.  How to tell the nanny. 

Will she want to stay on for just after-school care for Oldest?  How much would we pay her?  What about August when school hasn't started yet?  Will she want to just watch Oldest for less money? And, if nanny doesn't want to stay on to watch Oldest:

2. Logistics of firing nanny. 

I think we agreed to 4 weeks' notice.  Will she still want to take her vacation the last 2 weeks of these 4 weeks. What else do I need to do?

3. Telling the children.

What's the best way to explain this to a 2.5 year old?  How do we 'sell' it to them?  How will Oldest feel that she doesn't get to go to day care?

4. Transitioning Youngest and Middle to day care program.

How will they feel about giving up days of relative freedom with the nanny?  Will they cry? How long will it take for them to adjust? 

5. Child care for Oldest for rest of August.

Look into day camps, grandparents, and extra days off for me.  Will Middle be upset that she doesn't get to go to day camp? 

6. Finding after-school care for Oldest when school starts. 

Probably means hiring another nanny.  What a headache.  And she'll need all-day care for non-school days too.  Is this possible?  Will she be OK at school for lunch?  What about the breakfast program... is this too much to ask from a 6 year-old?

It's going to be a busy and stressful couple of weeks...

Daycare Poor

A recent article by Tamara Baluja in the Globe and Mail addresses how the high costs of child care are leaving many families "daycare poor".  It's the equivalent of being house poor, where you own a home but don't have money for much else.  With monthly child care costs as high as $2000, many families don't have a lot of money left over for 'extras', let alone long-term saving.

I wouldn't consider us to be daycare poor.  We haven't had to remortgage our home like one family I recently heard interviewed.  We are still managing to contribute to our retirement savings through our company plans. And I certainly don't feel as though we are struggling to get by.

But the cost of child care has definitely impacted us in a number of ways:

Line of credit.  I hate our line of credit.  We originally got it years ago, before children, in order to finance our car.  We're supposed to be paying it off, but instead it sits there like an emergency fund that we regrettably dip into far too often.   Mostly to cover our primary bank account when it inevitably drops into the red, or to cover credit card balances when cash flow issues arise from time to time.  I fear that our line of credit will never go away.

Child care choice.  A nanny may have been more affordable option, but it is not my first choice.   Especially with 3 preschoolers, I think that it is too much to expect quality care from a single woman, who is experienced, but untrained in early childhood education and child development.  I believe that the social development of my children would be better achieved in a structured environment with trained experts, and so, I echo the words of Halifax dad Sean Williams, interviewed in the Globe and Mail article, who:

"believes in the positives of daycare, even though the annual cost of $18,000 for his two daughters is tough to manage. “I’m not sure if my kids would get the same attention or expertise in home care as they would with early childhood experts, or learn counting and alphabets,” he said. “You get what you pay for.” "

Sofa. We have two absolutely terrible sofas in our house.  One on the main floor living room, and one in the basement playroom/living room.  The first was gifted to us when Nana passed away.  It has since been ripped and torn by the cat, made dirty by a dog who (isn't supposed to) sleeps on it, and stained by markers and juice.  It's covered up by a sofa cover, but I'm sure it's not fooling anyone.  

The basement sofa is a cheap, terribly uncomfortable davenport that is now also filthy.  It's been peed on, puked on and suffered many juice and yogurt spills.  Although it's been cleaned, it still looks worn and I can never totally forget about the things it's been exposed to.  And it's terribly uncomfortable.  I mentioned that, right?

However, we just can't seem to justify the purchase of a new sofa. (We've talked about, but decided against, trying to buy one second hand.  We're too worried about bed bugs, and besides, what things might that sofa have been exposed to that I just don't know about?)

Backyard landscaping.  I dream of patio stones in my garden.  And a privacy fence, at least where the trees aren't big enough to limit my sight of my neighbour's yard.  Instead, we have wood chips.   They look nice enough, but they bring a lot of dirt into the house, and weeds and mushrooms sometimes sprout up.  And instead of a serene garden escape (at least when my children aren't outside playing), we see the weeds and garbage strewn across our neighbours yard and often listen to the yapping of their Jack Russell terriers who bark at us whenever we move.

Vacations.  Aside from a fantastic annual ski holiday with my in-laws, who mostly pay for the trip, and wonderful trips to my parents' cottage, we don't foresee a family vacation for several more years.  Which is OK, I think.  Family vacations with young children generally require a vacation after the vacation, don't they?


Some of these financial impacts are significant.  Others are pretty trivial.  But it does make us think about what we could be doing with an extra $24,000 each year.  What would you spend your money on if you didn't have to pay for child care?

Squeaky Wheel

From: Average Working Mom

Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012

To: Day Care Administrator

Subject: Re: RE: Wait List Check-in for My Daughters

Dear Day Care Administrator,

Thank you for speaking with my husband last week regarding my daughters’ position on the wait list for your day care centre. 

Needless to say, we were quite disappointed and frustrated with the situation.  I certainly don’t envy your responsibility in managing the day care places and wait list.  It must also be highly frustrating for you to deal with the multitude of families searching for quality care when the spots are so limited.

I understand that due to capacity limitations, there is no chance that there will be a spot for my oldest daughter.   My husband explained that even children currently enrolled in the day care in the Preschool program are being turned away from the School Age program. 

Based on your conversation with my husband, it seemed as though there might be a limited possibility of spots becoming available for my middle and youngest daughter in the Preschool programs.   This is a little reassuring, but still leaves us in limbo.  If spots for one or both of them become available, we will then be in a difficult position of finding, justifying and combining some sort of before- and after-school care for our oldest and/or all-day care for one child, with child care at the day care centre for another.

I was also quite upset at our apparent miscommunication about the requested start date for our children.  Knowing how difficult it is to secure a day care spot, I certainly never intended to reduce our chances even further by requesting the same start date for all three children.  I realise that the likelihood of this occurring is very, very low.  I believe I had asked to move our requested start date to any time after June 2012, and that your system selected September 2012 as this is when the greatest changeover in day care places occurs.  However, in the past, I have been offered spots for my children up to a month or two before my requested start date, and I presumed that this flexibility was built into the system.  I also mistakenly presumed that the start date could vary between children.

My frustration also stems from the fact that our oldest and middle daughter were in the day care centre in the past.  Because we couldn’t justify the financial cost of keeping two children in day care while I was at home on an unpaid maternity leave, we sacrificed our spots.  But not before putting their names back on the wait list.  That was in the summer of 2009.   My children have been on the wait list for almost 3 years.

I’m sure that the recent gentrification of our neighbourhood, and the increasing number of babies and young families has impacted the demand for spots at the day care centre.  And I imagine that the upcoming changeover to All-Day Kindergarten at this school is having an effect on the management of day care spots.  I have no idea how the wait list is managed, and I can only imagine the complexity of figuring out wait list priority versus requested start dates.   It seems like a nightmare.  Or, a game of chance.

Perhaps this is part of my frustration.  I believe it would be helpful for parents if the day care centre could issue some sort of policy and procedure on how the wait list system works.  It might make me feel less like I was playing a game, and more like I was part of a process.  Is this something that your institution has considered?

I hope that I haven’t come across as overly negative, and I certainly don’t intend to be attacking you or the management of your day care program in any personal way.  But as you can imagine, and probably encounter on a daily basis, finding quality child care and dealing with the waiting game of day care program wait lists, is incredibly exasperating.   If there is any way that I can work to help change the system, by sharing my concerns with other administrators, participating in strategic planning, or contributing to letter writing campaigns, for example, please let me know.  I would appreciate the opportunity to take this cause to a higher level and strive to improve the system for all families.

Thank you for your help.

Kind regards,

Average Working Mom

Claiming the Cost

So we got a letter from Canada Revenue Agency.  They have asked us to provide support for our claim of $21,000* in child care expenses from our 2011 income tax and benefit return. 

No problem.  We just need to fill out the Child Care Expenses Deduction form along with our Business Number, T4 Summary, and our nanny’s SIN, since we act as employers for the nanny who works in our home.

I know that the government needs to review income tax returns since it is a self-assessment system, but it just makes me wonder:

If they receive an income tax return for 2 full-time working parents in Toronto with 3 children under the age of 6, wouldn’t you assume that we’re paying for child care, and that we easily reached and exceeded the maximum amount?  Do I really need to prove it?

*$21,000 is the maximum amount we can claim for child care expenses for our 3 children.

Waiting Games

I was all set to write about birthday cakes, until I heard on the radio this morning about the dozen or so parents who lined up all night for registration for six coveted day care spots at a subsidised child care centre in a school in west Toronto.  Are the parents crazy?  Would I do the same thing?

Yeah, I would probably line up for hours, even overnight if it meant getting a guaranteed spot for my kids in a licensed child care centre.  Especially if it was a child care centre located within the school, and definitely if it was a subsidised child care centre.  But would I line up for hours, overnight if it meant I was only going to get on the wait list?  Probably not.

The trouble with wait lists is that they’re not really about waiting.  At least for child care centres, in my experience, wait lists are not simply a virtual line-up of people waiting their turn for the next available day-care spot. The administrators may be waiting, but as a parent, you need to be proactively managing your place on the list.  You have to play the game.  Call persistently.  Make your presence known to the child care centre administrators.  Call again and again.  Bring cupcakes to the child care centre.  Keep calling.

It certainly isn’t a fair system.  Now, I know that life isn’t fair.  But when I think about the system for licensed child care in Toronto, I get upset and angry and frustrated.

When our oldest was born, we were warned by neighbours to start calling day-care centres as soon as possible.  By the time she was about four months old, I think I had her name on two or three different child care centre wait lists.  In the five plus years since, I only ever heard back from one of them.  I wasn’t playing the game.   Since no spots were available by the time I went back to work, we went with a licensed home care system.  

Then, we were expecting again.  This time, I called to put both Oldest and baby on the wait list for our preferred child care centre right away.   Plus another day-care centre for Oldest.  When I returned to work after this maternity leave, baby was in the child care centre, but there were still no spots for Oldest.  We trekked back and forth between the child care centre and another licensed home care for 4 months until Oldest got a spot in the newly expanded preschool room of the child care centre.

By this time, baby number 3 was on her way.  And here’s where it gets complicated.  Of course, baby number 3 was put on the wait list almost as soon as I knew I was pregnant.   But with Middle and Oldest, what would we do?  We certainly couldn’t afford to pay for child care while I was on maternity leave.  But that meant sacrificing their spots, and going back to the dreaded wait list.  This time around, I had also gotten wise to the separate wait list for child care fee subsidy offered by the city.   However, keeping up with two separate wait lists could turn into a part-time job.  Nothing has ever come of the subsidy wait list.

Needless to say, there wasn’t a spot for them when I returned to work last March, and so we employed a nanny.  Since having all three in a child care centre would have been cost-prohibitive while Youngest was an infant, using a nanny has at least been a more economical and convenient alternative, even if it wasn’t my preference.  But now that Youngest will be a pre-schooler herself in September, we’re hoping that our seemingly perpetual wait list presence will pay off for us.

So we started with emails to the administrator in March and April.  Now we’ve moved to phone calls, which are all but embarrassing as I try not to grovel, but just attempt to ascertain our chances.  “Hi, my daughters are the wait list for September, and I’m just calling to find out where we are or if you think there will be spots for them.”  “It’s too early to determine occupancy for September.  Try calling again in late July or August.”  Is the administrator just placating me?  Can’t she give me any insight at all?

And so, I’ll call again next month, and then maybe move to a bi-weekly schedule.  I haven’t moved on to cupcakes yet, but I might.  I just might.

How taxing

I finally calculated my income tax return.  OK, I didn’t calculate it myself.  Instead, I either lazily or efficiently chose an on-line tax preparation system over the old-fashioned pencil and workbook method.  Although I wonder if I had done it by hand myself, would it have made more sense to me?  In the end, I am sceptically thrilled at the result.  But I’m torn between wishing that I had submitted it sooner, and wondering if there has been a mistake.

This is the first income tax return that I’ve filed after working (almost) a full year with three kids in child care, and apparently, having three kids in child care bodes well for our income tax calculations.  It seems that the tax credit for child care expenses is primarily responsible for the nicely sized income tax refund we will be receiving.  (I knew there were added benefits to paying someone to look after our kids!)

I don't want to seem unappreciative of our forthcoming income tax refund, but I am wondering a little at the logic of it all...  The thing is, if the child care tax credit is what is primarily responsible for our tax refund, then the whole system seems a little backwards to me.

Instead of making us pay it all out, and then crediting some of it back to us in the end, why can’t the government make child care more affordable and accessible in the first place?

Of course, there's also the federal government’s Universal Child Care Benefit - $100 each month, per child under 6, to support us in our child care choices.  While it's nice to receive the extra money, it certainly doesn't go far in covering child care costs.  Plus, it’s considered taxable income!

As it is, the tax credit for child care expenses capped at $21,000.  We are using one of the most economical options for child care, and even still, it costs us quite a bit more than $21,000 a year.  And the cap doesn't seem to vary according to the number of kids being cared for; the $21,000 limit would apply to a family with one child and to a family with more.

As it is, our refund is not going to be spent in any way that would meaningfully support the economy.  Instead, it’s being used to pay down some of the debt that we incurred by paying for child care in the first place.  Does this make any sense to anyone else?

Kindergarten Registration

I’ll be registering Middle for junior kindergarten (JK) this week.  While it’s exciting that she’ll be starting school, making new friends, and learning new things, this is not what excites us most. 

For us, having Middle start school means we’re one step closer to the end of regular child-care payments. 

When I returned to work after my last maternity leave, we chose to employ a live-out nanny to care for our three young children.  Although there are many conveniences and advantages to having someone come to our house to look after our girls, I don’t believe that this is the best option for our children’s development.  It is however, the cheapest option.  My personal preference for child-care is a licensed non-profit child-care centre.   However, besides the frustrations of the wait-list for spots, the daily fees in our local child-care centre would have cost us over $160.  As it is, our family spends about $2500 a month in child-care expenses.  

Unfortunately, our local school doesn’t yet have Full-Day Kindergarten. Although the Full-Day Kindergarten program began to be implemented in Ontario in 2010, the year that Oldest started JK, our school is slated to be among the last of the schools in the province to implement the program.  Provided the Full-Day Kindergarten program isn’t cancelled between now and then, (as suggested by economist Don Drummond in his cost-saving recommendations, but fortunately still supported by the Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan), Full-Day Kindergarten will be available to our school by the time Youngest is 4, in 2014. 

That means, in 2.5 years, we’ll finally be able to see our child-care costs decrease dramatically.

I don’t like to wish away time.  I don’t really look forward to the days when my little girls are not so little, but I do like to imagine what we could be doing with that extra money every month.  Although, I suppose by the time they we no longer need to pay for child-care, we’ll need to pay for dance classes and costumes, or ski school and equipment, or figure skating lessons, or martial arts, or piano, or…