Reply to Review of Farhana Ahmed's home daycare (in South Arlington) and lessons learned

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[quote=Anonymous]Long post, but as a mom searching for daycare for the first time, there were several mistakes I made. Hopefully, you can learn from them!

I had my son at Farhana Ahmed's home daycare (3120 13th St S) for 3 weeks, after which we had to switch providers due to availability and communication challenges. Since my son was only at Farhana’s for a short period, I cannot speak too much about her actual care of my child. I do believe that she will care for your child to the best of her ability. My tips if you are considering Farhana (but can apply for any in-home daycare provider):

1)	Make sure to ask for a trial period in the contract if not already specified. Otherwise, you will need to pay for two months of service from the date of notice plus her vacation time, even if you had only been there for one day.

2)	Make sure to have the days/hours of care clearly specified in the contract (even if verbally discussed) and what is paid for/not paid for. This would include the total number of sick days, specific holidays, other planned closures, etc. instead of a general “all holidays and sick days will be paid for”.

In my case, it was not until after I had signed the contract that Farhana had mentioned she was planning to close every other Friday for the rest of the year (3.5 months) in order to have extra time to clean. The first time she mentioned it, I told her this did not work for me due to my work schedule, and she said not to worry. Over the next two weeks she again told me 3-4 times that she intended to close every other Friday, and I repeatedly told her that it didn’t work for me. In addition, if I had ultimately agreed to take my son every other Friday, she still expected payment for the full week. Eventually I was skeptical that she could accommodate my schedule which is what led me to search for other daycares.

3)	With that in mind, when asking for referrals, try to speak with referrals that are current clients/families. They will have the most up to date knowledge of how the daycare is currently being run. Especially if there are new assistants or different hours.

4)	Specify vacation payment expectations in the contract.

After being at Farhana’s for 3 weeks and telling her I was withdrawing, I was told I needed to pay for two weeks of vacation on top of the 2 months termination fee. When I had initially asked about vacation time in the interview, Farhana explained that she normally took one week off at the end of the year and one in the middle, during which both weeks would still be paid for. It was not until my second to last day that I was told that the vacation time fee would be treated as an additional benefit to be paid out if she had not taken vacation during my time with her (regardless of how long I had been enrolled). We settled on me paying for only one week of her vacation, but this is definitely something that I wish I had been aware of from the beginning.

5) In general, revise the contract, even if things were clarified/discussed verbally. Her contract was poorly written at the time and I excused it since English was not her first language and I thought I understood the intent. That resulted in her being able to default to her contract even if she had verbally explained something differently.
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