ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

My mom got called in for a kindergarten meeting because I picked up some of my dad's swearing. There was a little toy multi-level garage that sent Matchbox cars down a spiral ramp and I said "look at that goddamn son of a bitch go!"

oh god, speaking of day care

We've started looking into how much we should expect to pay starting in 2015 and literally every single place I've found so far is looking to run somewhere between $2200-$2400 per child before subsidy, which we don't qualify for. I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

Ha yeah my primary goal re: swearing is not to swear talking to the baby. Not like swearing at the baby (although I don't want to do that either) but just being like, "Wow, Ivy will you look at that crazy rainstorm! That is going to fuck up my basil plant!" as a possibly word for word example from about fifteen minutes ago.

If we had twins, we would definitely have a nanny. We couldn't afford daycare for two.

I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

ime this is pretty much the case. now I understand why so many of my parents generation stayed home (I didn't know a single person who was raised by a nanny growing up). I'm pretty anti-nanny tbh.

nanny/daycare basically eats an entire person's salary cuz they know that's the max amt of money they can get

in a better system, everyone gets to work if they want to and daycare is publicly funded but hey... AMERICA!

oh god, speaking of day care

We've started looking into how much we should expect to pay starting in 2015 and literally every single place I've found so far is looking to run somewhere between $2200-$2400 per child before subsidy, which we don't qualify for. I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

― On-the-spot Dicespin (DJP), Monday, June 2, 2014 1:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is that per month? Yikes! We're looking at $1200-1400 month for nursery school now (probably starting in fall) but I think daycare for under 2 is more expensive. I would think at that price you probably could get a nanny. Our solution was pt nanny and pt with in-laws, who live near us.

Is that per month? Yikes!

Yup! Including places that require the parents of children attending to volunteer once a week working at the day care.

The main reasons we're strongly considering a nanny:

1. My wife is adamant about returning to work and I am adamant about remaining at work.
2. We make too much money to qualify for day care subsidies but not enough money to pay for two children at the same time.
3. One of my wife's bridesmaids/former roommates is a nanny whose current child is aging out of her care this year.

We found a daycare near us that is a drop-in style center and charges an hourly rate. Given that my wife usually works night shifts (and her work week typically wraps around the weekend) it's been working out well for us. She drops off our toddler around 2 p.m. and I'll pick the kid up between 5 and 6.

One of my wife's bridesmaids/former roommates is a nanny whose current child is aging out of her care this year.

ah well, a nanny that you have an existing personal relationship with is way different from just hiring a random one. I only draw this distinction cuz in my experience observing nannies at work in the wild, man that is some shitty care, and they all seem to hate/resent their employers.

Eh, I think it varies. We're pretty happy with ours. But I'm still glad she's with her grandma a couple days a week, there's a huge difference between how stimulated and happy she is with her grandma vs the nanny.

I really like Ivy's daycare and our current system (she goes to daycare three days/week, I do my best to work at home with her two days/week) is working so far but there are some serious logistical perks to having a nanny. Like not having to bundle the kids into the car with all of their required gear every morning, which means not having to get them dressed or cleaned up before you leave, plus at least in our area, nannies will usually also do light housekeeping and run errands.

The first day taking Ivy to daycare was such a frantic, stressful mess that Jeff and I signed up for a nanny search website that afternoon, but we never followed through with talking to anybody. We just got better at getting Ivy to and from daycare.

daycare pricing is just brutal

I don't think you could say all nannies are shitty any more than you could say all day cares are shitty? Anyways IIRC in Chicago day care for <2 yrs is about twice as expensive as day care >2 years.

if michael were in full time day care the best rate i could get is $1350 a month

Yeah I'm just sitting here trying to do the math of adding one or two more days vs. what impact it might have on my career to basically do a half-assed job 2/5 of every week and the same thing happened as when I think to hard about my student loans, ie I somehow find myself on Etsy browsing twee handmade purses and thinking about maybe going for a walk to the library later.

yeah infant care is exponentially more expensive cuz its so much harder/intensive and the kids are just that much more fragile and the parents are that much more hypersensitive, I would think.

My nanny judgmentalism is strictly based on my limited local experience - the nannies in my building, the nannies I see at the playground/library/school, the nannies my wife interacts with, etc. We talked about it as an option but my wife just didn't like her job that much to warrant sacrificing her salary to pay for childcare that would in all likelihood be inferior to what she could provide herself, is how we thought about it.

totally understandable that other people's priorities are different - some people love their jobs and can't fathom staying home w children, I'm not laying any judgment on that.

Legally you have to have a lower teacher to infant ratio (four infants to one teacher in IL) so there are higher labor costs associated with infant care as well.

My wife made enough, had good enough benefits and short enough hours that it eventually made sense for her to go back, I dont' think it was so much a matter of "loving her job" as wanting to balance current childcare against also making sure we can live in a safe place with good schools, put money away for her college, etc.

Also despite your disclaimer, those two posts definitely sound really judgmental, as in "My wife didn't want to keep her job at the cost of inferior child care, but some people have different priorities and love their jobs more than their children. NO JUDGMENT."

well there's always the possibility that some people may be better at their jobs than they are in caring for their children - not everyone's cut out to chase after little kids all day

Yes, shitty parents should go back to work, great point.

And your nanny judgement might just be based off your own observations but you should still be able to think rationally beyond your observations that literally all nannies are awful, which could just not realistically be true. Have you never observed a little documentary called MARY POPPINS?

Also despite your disclaimer, those two posts definitely sound really judgmental, as in "My wife didn't want to keep her job at the cost of inferior child care, but some people have different priorities and love their jobs more than their children. NO JUDGMENT."

― carl agatha, Monday, June 2, 2014 2:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well there's always the possibility that some people may be better at their jobs than they are in caring for their children - not everyone's cut out to chase after little kids all day

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 2, 2014 2:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

QED

Mary Poppins costs $90k yr iirc

Haw! Some kids at the playground convinced my kid to prank call some random number on his cell phone. The woman calls back and tells him she is going to report him to the police. So he UTTERLY FREAKS OUT and confesses to us in tears. "I DON'T WANNA GO TO JUUUUUUVIE!"

Apparently his prank call gambit was "Hello, is this Constipationtown?... Oh yeah, have you taken your daily poop today?"

Welcome to being grounded, kid.

omg I kind of love this kid.

freeway jammed in constipationtown, slow going tonight

this is the constipationtown traffic copter back to you jerry

sorry

lol. I'm gonna use that to haunt him at some point in the future.

so... last night I picked up J during the middle-of-the-night feed and when I put his head on my shoulder, he said something that I could have sworn was "Daddy"

I mentioned this to my wife as an instance of fake speech/wishful thinking and she said "I could have sworn he did that the other day! I was changing his brother and J was in his crib crying and at one point I think he called out for you"

Today is their 3 month birthday btw

That's just eerie.

Also happy birthday, D&JP!

it's kind of exciting that he's talking so much so early!

does this work
https://flic.kr/p/nxWdL7

stupid flickr

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5536/14144882478_eb7d3e7c39_m.jpg

that is squee as hell but you need to take it to the quarantine, my friend

yeah sorry wrong thread

GAWD

I am a terrible peoplemaker

gtfo with that cuetness shakey

no

seriously

GET OUT

:)

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/

Content note, no children die in that article. It's about risk assessment, irrational fear, helicopter parenting, etc.

That was really good. As an anxious parent (as in a parent who also has anxiety issues in general) I can identify with this author a lot. I like the points she makes about isolation and competitive parenting, too. Also, it reminded me of this bullshit - http://abcnews.go.com/US/mom-jailed-breastfeeding-drinking-waitress-fired/story?id=21622331 (that video autoplays), which hits home because I have breastfed Ivy in public while drinking beer numerous times. Like, if you see a parent doing something you think is neglectful, but you don't feel like you need to intervene immediately to save the kid from harm, ask yourself how "neglectful" the thing you are witnessing really is. And with DCFS involvement, I can't help but think about the children who die of abuse/neglect while under putative DCFS supervision, with the excuse always being about lack of resources (that is a valid excuse - there is not enough resources) and then using those precious limited resources to counsel a parent that somebody videotaped leaving a kid in a car for ten minutes on a fifty degree day.

I appreciate the content note, too, since I would not have read that based on the URL alone (see parent with anxiety issues).

Oh man, that article was fantastic and I think we are going to get arrested the instant we spend more time outside of the house with the kids now

The author was really self-aware and thoughtful in a way not very many authors of popular articles about parenting seem to be. Like acknowledging that overprotective parenting is exhausting and can't actually protect kids from the statistically greater dangers while admitting she does all the overprotective things because what else can you do? (Also because she was arrested.)

I called across the house to my mother that I was going to run to the store to replace them.

“Me too,” my son said.

I asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to stay home with Grandma. “You hate going to the store,” I reminded him.

“No I don’t!” he said. I should have seen what was going on — my parents had been letting him play with the iPad in the car and he was trying to score the extra screen time.

Should have just tablet out of the car.

Being married to a mandated reporter has given me a very different perspective on protective services, at least in NYC. I think the city's services are very good, and also the error tends to be on the side of not calling rather than calling. Nobody wants to do it. And it takes a LOT for a child to actually be removed from a home even if they open a case.