Met with the daycare director today. As you might now, daycare is an indispensable tool, becuase without reliable daycare the entire "working single Mommy" thing is literally impossible. As it is, even with "reliable" daycare, all it takes is sick kid (oh, so frequent in daycare settings; but understandable, see here and here) or a miscommunication with the daycare (not rare enough and not tolerable, see here) for everything to go to hell in a diaperbag.
I complained here about the new daycare's inflexible policies. Especially the policy of requiring children to be at daycare at 7:30am if we chose to pay for the 11 hour day (the most flexible option).
So which is worse: to write a ridiculous policy that you stick with, or to write a policy that you didn't really mean?
This morning when asked, the director said "I didn't mean that, they need to be in here by 9am. You have any time before that to bring them in and any time after that to pick them up."
OK, fine. That works better for us. But it has the side effect of making us trust your written policies a lot less. What you read is NOT what you get. In any case, that's a win for us.
Moreover, choosing the 8 hour day, she will allow 1. Different schedules for each semester, 2. Different 8 hour shifts for each day of the week, and if necessary 3. Different schedules for each child. This is absolutely necessary because I am going to do my damndest to breastfeed this child exclusively for 6 months, which failed last time (in part due to my work schedule).
With two kids in the daycare in the spring, the 8.5 hour policy will cost us $100 less per week than the 11-hour flexible policy. That's pretty significant for our budget. (Want to be jealous? It's the difference between $240/ week and $340/week for BOTH kids, more here in the comments).
Hub and I were trying to figure out why I get so worked up over these things. I said, "For one, I believe the director when she makes rules, and don't take for granted that she'll make an exception for us. And maybe there's a bit of Mommy guilt involved." Hub replies, "There's such a thing as Daddy guilt too, you know."
I'm glad it all worked out for you. It turns out that she is pretty flexible, especially with allowing different 8.5 hour increments on different days and different schedules for different kids (although I can see the latter more than the former).
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm jealous. And wondering if we should move. ;-) Even the 11 hour price for two kids is far cheaper than what we'd pay around here.
I too am glad you got it worked out. Nothing can be more distracting than a daycare nightmare.
ReplyDeleteYay.