How young is too young?daycare?
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How young is too young?daycare?
| Tue, 12-02-2003 - 1:00am |
If you have a career and you had a baby what age would you think is apropriate to send your child to daycare/dayhome after they were born?
I have a friend that is a dayhome provider, she has 10mnth old twins and she was provinding care for a 2yr old. Mom of the 2yr old just had a baby and she was back to work when baby was 4days old, in my friends care. It is only half days now, but she is soon going to be full time, the baby is almost 5wks. Thoughts?

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Laura
Why wouldn't school be considered substitute care in your mind?
PumpkinAngel
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Gee, I send my children to school to learn, be encourage and be cared for by teachers, not to play.
PumpkinAngel
i don't really stand convinced of the rest of it though. you seem to be describing suburbs around a city that contains even more employment than a single small college or university, which would all the more guarantee demand for and access to good-quality dc. now if what you're saying is that you lived in a suburban slum that happened to have one and only one employer--the social services office you worked for--within a one-hour commute of it--no other employers closer than the one-hour-away college or university--and you don't consider any dc outside the boundaries of that slum that contained both your house and employer accessible, then you could be telling the whole truth. but the simple facts that you describe your location as urban and your neighborhood as suburban, and that your employer was within easy breastfeeding-commuting distance from your home, suggest that there were other major industries/employers closer than the university, and that there was therefore considerable demand for better-than-slum-quality dc in your more immediate area than that one-hour commute. i'll add, then, that i can understand someone saying that there is no good dc within a few meters of her office, but i still don't believe that if a government office serving a metropolitan area was within a breastfeeding commute of your home, *no* good dc was.
In other words, if she can do it (and do it very well I might add), then anyone can do it. Sure, some people like my friend do have special considerations to deal with. But for the most part I think it is ultimately a parent's responsibility to care for their own children on a full-time basis.
However, in response to your question, "Is it OK to have extra help so long as a parent is physically present in the house?" I guess that wouldn't be a big deal, as long as "a parent is physically present as well as physically participating." In other words, if mom is asleep in the other room, technically speaking she is "physically present" however she is not "physically participating"? I have no problem with additional help as long as both parties are physically participating in the caregiving. However, except in very extreme cases, shouldn't parents be able to handle and care for their children entirely on their own?
Sure, and most parents can. But the question is whether having the parents handle and care for their children entirely on their own (I assume you mean under 4, since you are obviously no longer doing this for your daughter) makes sense or is the best solution given any number of other factors. The sad thing is, you don't seem to be in the least interested in hearing about or understanding what those other factors might be.
But I'm guessing you won't answer this post either...I seem to have landed on your ignore list.
Laura
In other words, having four children is NOT the same as having quadruplets that are all the same age, nor is it the same as having a 4:1 caregiver to infant ratio in a group care setting.
Bottom line - being a SAHM who cares for her own four children of various ages in her own home, is VERY different from having a substitute caregiver that cares for four infants who are very close in age in a group care setting.
"In other words, if she can do it (and do it very well I might add), then anyone can do it."
Why would you conclude this?
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