Daycare costs - OMG

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For this price , nanny share in your home where the baby sleeps in her own crib in her own home, is the best. Agencies have nanny share options and you will never regret. It is a great option - very much like staying home with your baby, especially if you WFH.

If you are sharing a nanny how is your baby always sleeping in its crib? Don't you switch houses?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had 2 kids in Bright Horizons at the same time (ouch!) and had a positive experience. I think you get what you pay for in terms of a daycare setting that is accredited (our location, at least), reliably open/available, and a positive and safe environment. Back when there were less options for workplace flexibilities, being open to coincide with the federal holidays (and the general workday) was very important. If someone called out sick, it wasn't up to me to figure out what to do, the center had to adjust and handle to provide the service I was paying for. Personally, I wasn't up for managing a nanny or au pair, and found the daycare setting to be what worked best.

I feel your sticker shock - we had the same!

This. These are the advantages of daycare. It comes with a price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For this price , nanny share in your home where the baby sleeps in her own crib in her own home, is the best. Agencies have nanny share options and you will never regret. It is a great option - very much like staying home with your baby, especially if you WFH.

If you are sharing a nanny how is your baby always sleeping in its crib? Don't you switch houses?

Depends on the share. Not everyone wants to host.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For this price , nanny share in your home where the baby sleeps in her own crib in her own home, is the best. Agencies have nanny share options and you will never regret. It is a great option - very much like staying home with your baby, especially if you WFH.

If you are sharing a nanny how is your baby always sleeping in its crib? Don't you switch houses?

Most nanny shares pick one house and there are two cribs there and high chairs etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nanny share split 2 ways was about 3,000 each in 2020/21 once you factor in taxes, payroll services, and mandatory overtime. I think you can pay less for daycare (the big chains tend to have higher prices). I find a small, quality daycare to be so much easier than nanny share.

+1 We are in Arlington and did a nannyshare until preschool. Infant care spots are slim and expensive at licensed centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had 2 kids in Bright Horizons at the same time (ouch!) and had a positive experience. I think you get what you pay for in terms of a daycare setting that is accredited (our location, at least), reliably open/available, and a positive and safe environment. Back when there were less options for workplace flexibilities, being open to coincide with the federal holidays (and the general workday) was very important. If someone called out sick, it wasn't up to me to figure out what to do, the center had to adjust and handle to provide the service I was paying for. Personally, I wasn't up for managing a nanny or au pair, and found the daycare setting to be what worked best.

I feel your sticker shock - we had the same!

Many of these brand name centers are high quality, but much of the extra money you pay goes towards enriching their investors. Of it is the best choice for your family go for it but I would not specifically seek out a Bright Horizons or the like. Look up the daycares convenient to you, look up their licensing inspection history, tour, ask about when they close and how much turnover they have, and make a decision from there. We thought for sure we'd send our child to a Goddard School when she got older but fell in love with our much less expensive locally owned center.

https://earlylearningnation.com/2023/03/private-equitys-growth-in-child-care-chains-imperils-access-for-many-families-research-finds/

[Anonymous]

Just find a nice local family daycare, it's a home away from home. Our son is thriving in public school now, smart, fun and empathetic boy

[Anonymous]

We are in a nanny share. We do not switch houses, and there are not so many things to "agree upon" with the other family. We did not have any issues so far, and we are both happy. The other baby sleeps in the pack n play in a guest bedroom, and loves it. We take turns making lunch. We paid 50% each for the double stroller. We slightly adjusted drop off and pick up time to suit the other family and a bit of extra time worked for us. I think it depends on what you make up your mind for, and what you want for your baby. Daycare was not an option for us, so we made it work, fingers crossed, for all the parties, and so did the other family. Babies are thriving and they are virtually never - ever even cry. They go to sleep on the same schedule and everything works like clock.

[Anonymous]

Bright Horizons gouges its prices if you’re not enrolling through an employer. The subsidized rate through an employer would probably put it in the $2,500 range. That was my experience, at least.

[Anonymous]

We are in Bethesda and similar - over $3000/month. Goes down a little over the years as teacher-kid ratios increase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in Bethesda and similar - over $3000/month. Goes down a little over the years as teacher-kid ratios increase.

Our center in Rockville is $2200 for our baby and $1800 for our toddler. We were briefly at an in home for our toddler and it was about $1500.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had 2 kids in Bright Horizons at the same time (ouch!) and had a positive experience. I think you get what you pay for in terms of a daycare setting that is accredited (our location, at least), reliably open/available, and a positive and safe environment. Back when there were less options for workplace flexibilities, being open to coincide with the federal holidays (and the general workday) was very important. If someone called out sick, it wasn't up to me to figure out what to do, the center had to adjust and handle to provide the service I was paying for. Personally, I wasn't up for managing a nanny or au pair, and found the daycare setting to be what worked best.

I feel your sticker shock - we had the same!

Many of these brand name centers are high quality, but much of the extra money you pay goes towards enriching their investors. Of it is the best choice for your family go for it but I would not specifically seek out a Bright Horizons or the like. Look up the daycares convenient to you, look up their licensing inspection history, tour, ask about when they close and how much turnover they have, and make a decision from there. We thought for sure we'd send our child to a Goddard School when she got older but fell in love with our much less expensive locally owned center.

https://earlylearningnation.com/2023/03/private-equitys-growth-in-child-care-chains-imperils-access-for-many-families-research-finds/

+1 it is in part, expensive because it is a chain that is run for profit. I'm also in Arlington and I would say no, those are not typical prices. Bright Horizons is always far and away the most expensive as others have said. FWIW I put my oldest in a center (not Bright Horizons so I can't speak to that) as an infant and pretty quickly pulled him and went with a home daycare which was a better fit for our family. So like others have said different things work for different people. We really loved the home daycare setting for the infant/early toddler time period with a transition to a more preschool center based setting around age 2 - 2.5. What I liked about home daycares - smaller setting, less kids (both the home daycares we used over the years had 5-7 kids at a time), consistency of caregivers which is really important in those early years, and a huge one I didn't realize before having a baby: SEPARATE NAP SPACES. A dark, quiet room for napping makes all the difference for infant sleep habits. Most centers babies are all in one room on different nap schedules which was hard for my oldest.

Just like anything not all home daycares are created equal, but there are some really great ones out there. My 3 year old just asked last night to call M his home daycare caregiver - we called her up and they chatted for a few minutes, she sang him a song. He left her place six months ago and we still visit and every little bit he'll ask to call like he did last night. She's our neighbor so it is easy and fun to keep in touch.

If you're interested in home daycares if you have access to MONA it is a great place to find openings and get reviews from folks.

[Anonymous]

Oh and we paid $400 a week for our home daycare as of six months ago. And there are even more affordable ones if falls church is convenient for your commute at all.

[Anonymous]

Holy Crap! I had shock when I was paying $1780 in 2014. It went over $2k for the infant room before we aged out.

I chose BH initially because I liked the reliability of it and the big, clean spaces. My kids were happy and well cared for. However when my oldest got a full day preschool spot, the BH commute no longer made sense for the baby. We switched to an in-home in Arlington and that was $400-450/wk at the time. Even if it’s $500 now, that’s a lot less than $3300.

Did the provider speak perfect English? No. Was her basement playroom and backyard full of slightly sad looking second hand toys as opposed to BH? Yes. Was my child loved, fed, read to, and happy - absolutely. I am a huge fan of in-home care if you find someone you get a personal recommendation for from a parent who has used them in the last 1-2 years. I think of the thousands of dollars I could have saved. Also in home allowed so much more flexibility and customization around nap schedules, meals, etc. I was scared as a first time parent to allow my baby to be in a home with a stranger as opposed to BH where there are many adults watching what goes on. I wish I had gotten over that earlier because the small group mixed-age experience of in-home was really positive for us.

[Anonymous]

My child goes to a home daycare and the toys/materials are actually better than the highly rated center he was in before. The backyard was very well designed and had a lot of space for a small number of kids. The classroom space was also bigger overall because they don’t try to put as many kids in as possible (since they cannot have more than 12 kids regardless of how big their house is).

It is definitely a good option but always do your research. I didn’t know people to get recommendations from but I read online reviews and go on tours. I’ve been very happy with the places I’ve enrolled at.