Daycare.... When? and Why?

[Anonymous]

I currently have my 1 year old at home with a babysitter. While he seems to like her and is very happy I wonder if a center with more structure and activities/social life would be a better fit. He does have social interaction with three older cousins a few times a week and our pediatrician said he could remain in the current setting until kindergarten. But I wonder what the research says about how children grow developmentally, what is the best setting (why?) and what other moms think about if and when to move out of the house and into the center????

[Anonymous]

Is he going to learn how to act from a caring adult or a variety of young children?

[Anonymous]

My son's been in day care since he was four months old. If I could have afforded the ideal situation for us, that would have been to stay home until age 2. Perhaps even 3.

There are plusses and drawbacks to every child care situation. The best thing to do is get the absolute best quality of care you can find in whatever setting that is. If day care is high quality, then it's great. If it's low quality, it can be very harmful.

There are studies out there that show kids in high quality day care settings generally have larger vocabularies than kids who stay home. But there's also a slight increase in bad behavior in later years.

At 2.5 to 3.0, kids really start learning how to play "with" other kids, so I think that's a great age to really work on making sure he has time with peers.

If you are happy with your situation now, I'd probably just wait and start a preschool part-time at age 2 or 3. A few days a week.

[Anonymous]

I agree with another poster that there are pros and cons.

We had a nanny then put our child in daycare at age two. I think our child would have benefitted from having more interaction with other children starting at about age one and a half.

Another option would be a babysitter/nanny share with another child the same age as yours if you really like your babysitter.

For us, we feel daycare was the best choice because there's more variety of activities, it's more stable, and there's more interaction with many children. Plus it requires less oversight from us. We're thrilled with daycare but we happened to end up with a daycare we love and works well for our child.

Good luck whatever you decide. We had a tough time making this decision too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son's been in day care since he was four months old. If I could have afforded the ideal situation for us, that would have been to stay home until age 2. Perhaps even 3.

There are plusses and drawbacks to every child care situation. The best thing to do is get the absolute best quality of care you can find in whatever setting that is. If day care is high quality, then it's great. If it's low quality, it can be very harmful.

There are studies out there that show kids in high quality day care settings generally have larger vocabularies than kids who stay home. But there's also a slight increase in bad behavior in later years.

At 2.5 to 3.0, kids really start learning how to play "with" other kids, so I think that's a great age to really work on making sure he has time with peers.

If you are happy with your situation now, I'd probably just wait and start a preschool part-time at age 2 or 3. A few days a week.

I agree with this. Our first was in daycare from infancy on, while our second child was with a nanny until age 2, when he started half-day preschool a few days a week. At three he started daycare. It all went much better and in my opinion was more developmentally appropriate than what we did with our first child was.

[Anonymous]

I had my first child start daycare at 10 months and my second at 6 months. This was/is at a daycare we are very happy with and children generally thrive there. For my kids, that was the right thing. At the time I would have liked to stay home longer with my first, but could see that once she adjusted to daycare (and that took a few weeks), she absolutely loved it and the other kids. My second started at 6 months and I have to say that was a much easier transition, both because she was a little younger (less separation anxiety) and also because she was more familiar with the daycare before she started as she went there with my to pick my older DD up every day.

That said, both my DDs are very outgoing children, if they had more reserved temperaments it may have been a different experience for us. There are definitely some kids at our center where, for example, the transition between rooms is bumpy. Each time my kids moved to an older classroom they pretty much did not look back, they still had a lot of affection for their previous teachers but did not get upset in their new rooms.

I would have felt less comfortable about putting DD #2 into daycare at 6 months if I had not already been so familiar with where she was going and if the teachers in that room were not so stable (there has been zero turnover in the infant room teachers for many years).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son's been in day care since he was four months old. If I could have afforded the ideal situation for us, that would have been to stay home until age 2. Perhaps even 3.

There are plusses and drawbacks to every child care situation. The best thing to do is get the absolute best quality of care you can find in whatever setting that is. If day care is high quality, then it's great. If it's low quality, it can be very harmful.

There are studies out there that show kids in high quality day care settings generally have larger vocabularies than kids who stay home. But there's also a slight increase in bad behavior in later years.

At 2.5 to 3.0, kids really start learning how to play "with" other kids, so I think that's a great age to really work on making sure he has time with peers.

If you are happy with your situation now, I'd probably just wait and start a preschool part-time at age 2 or 3. A few days a week.

I agree with this. Our first was in daycare from infancy on, while our second child was with a nanny until age 2, when he started half-day preschool a few days a week. At three he started daycare. It all went much better and in my opinion was more developmentally appropriate than what we did with our first child was.

I agree too.
I have used daycare with both kids from the time they were a few months old. Both kids a thriving, smart, good kids, the now first-grader is doing great in school. No behavioral or other problems from using daycare. Both kids are extremely social, say please and thank you potty trained early…..having daycare in our lives only helped us.

And I don’t trust individual/lone care givers. So daycare was definitely the best choice for me.

[Anonymous]

My 20 month old is in daycare. She talks about her friends and teachers/caregivers nonstop at home. I was there the other day during snack and she went around the table and pointed out all the kids names. She LOVES her caregivers, hugs her friends, etc.

So I think after infancy, they really do benefit from having friends, learning to share, etc. She is in a way more structured environment than I could give her if we were at home every day I think.

Luckily, I only work four days a week so it's nice to give her an extra day at home and I'm not saying all toddlers need to be put in daycare five days a week for full days, but my point is that I am really starting to see the benefits after a year.