Anonymous wrote:There’s a common mindset shift that happens with parents of kids who are school aged, which is an acceptance of more days off from work, or half days. Relatedly, afternoons where you don’t always work into the evening as much as you would have before, because your kids have practice or other activities. People focus on the baby and toddler years as if they have the biggest career impact but I honestly found that easier. Yeah it’s possible to have your kids in before care, school, aftercare, and camps every day off school, but I felt like it started to take a toll on my kids after a while. (Among other things, they were exhausted). PreK is the hardest because your kids still need supervision. But having a middle to upper elementary kid home for a day while working from home is not impossible.

It’s very hard. And those of us with two demanding careers and slightly older (now late elementary school) kids had to deal with Covid when our kids were in PK. So all of the sudden we had no school or childcare and we still had to work all day every day! You will figure it out, especially if you are financially secure.

There’s a common mindset shift that happens with parents of kids who are school aged, which is an acceptance of more days off from work, or half days. Relatedly, afternoons where you don’t always work into the evening as much as you would have before, because your kids have practice or other activities. People focus on the baby and toddler years as if they have the biggest career impact but I honestly found that easier. Yeah it’s possible to have your kids in before care, school, aftercare, and camps every day off school, but I felt like it started to take a toll on my kids after a while. (Among other things, they were exhausted). PreK is the hardest because your kids still need supervision. But having a middle to upper elementary kid home for a day while working from home is not impossible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard. DCPS takes an *incredible* number of days off.

lol what 180 days is a standard. Some school districts do less.

And many states across the country do not even offer universal FREE pre-k tha is past 1:00pm.

Some people just complain!

Schools do not actually provide 180 days of instruction. Count 'em up. They don't. They are ignoring the law.

There is no ‘law for pre-k.’

Keep your nanny.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hard. DCPS takes an *incredible* number of days off.

lol what 180 days is a standard. Some school districts do less.

And many states across the country do not even offer universal FREE pre-k tha is past 1:00pm.

Some people just complain!

Schools do not actually provide 180 days of instruction. Count 'em up. They don't. They are ignoring the law.

Anonymous wrote:As others have said, it's hard to find camps that take PK kids, especially PK3, and those that do are expensive. As a result, we opted to pass on DCPS for PK3 and kept our kids at their daycare.

And this is fine, if you want to waste money or have a lot extra to burn.

Anonymous wrote:It's hard. DCPS takes an *incredible* number of days off.

lol what 180 days is a standard. Some school districts do less.

And many states across the country do not even offer universal FREE pre-k tha is past 1:00pm.

Some people just complain!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The one bit of advice we received is to not mentally count one any magical new wellspring of disposable income now that the daycare/home nanny days were over.

Aftercare, camps, playdate trade offs, vacation time.

Definitely true!

+100

Two early elementary kids in DCPS and no family in the area. All our child care help is paid. The combined cost of summer camp, after care (unless you're at a T1 school where this is no cost), and day-off camps for the two kids is very significant. Less than we were paying for daycare/nanny, but maybe not by much.

Even with all this, one parent absolutely experienced the career downshift a PP mentioned. We can't split dropoff and pickup (one parent does almost all of it) and there are also the unplanned things like kids getting sick or delayed starts/early dismissals.

The families we know with two full-time working parents both able to super-devote themselves to their career have au pairs or seemingly full-time nannies.

We live in Petworth and when our kids were in PK3 we used Casa Lala for day-off camps, it was one of the only places that took 3 and 4 year olds at that time and it was somewhere around $100/120 a day then. We knew several families who sent their preschoolers back to their old daycare for the days off, it seemed like a lot of daycares allowed this especially if a younger sibling was already there.

As others have said, it's hard to find camps that take PK kids, especially PK3, and those that do are expensive. As a result, we opted to pass on DCPS for PK3 and kept our kids at their daycare.

You’re wise to be looking ahead at this. My feedback is that unless you have another adult who can be on-call - a grandparent, nanny, etc - one of you will have to downshift your career. It’s just not doable to have two parents who both work non-flexible jobs especially if you have more than one kid.

Find a daycare that takes drop-ins near your house for the preK years. Camps that take 4yos fill up fast. Once your kids are K age it’s easier and you’ll have more options.

not the main reason, but the schedule was one of the many reasons we switched from DCPS to private

There are a ton of day-off camps run throughout the city, both based at schools and independent businesses. Most won't take PK3 but many take PK4 and nearly all will take them starting in K. I'm in upper NW so I am only familiar with the ones around here, but off the top of my head, the following offer day-off camps: Capitol Language Services, HoopEd, Red Panda, Silver Stars Gymnastics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have school for 180 days. A year has 365 days. School is NOT comprehensive childcare the way a nanny or daycare is.

Plan accordingly. Some people keep a nanny, some parents shift to part time, some people use day off camps and grandparents.

Many schools, especially charters, are not in session 180 days per year. They use accounting tricks to inflate the number of days they're open.

Theres 104 weekend days though. Its not like you and husband work all day Saturdays and Sundays.
DC Way, Busy Bees on the hill are the cheapest day off options aside form school aftercare

104+180=312.

So you still have to account for 50 days. Double FT working parents need to do some serious accounting to make this work.

Sorry bad math! 104+180= 284.

365-284= 81

OP, just recognize that you have 80 days of childcare that you need a solution for.

Anonymous wrote:Some daycares allow drop-ins. We continued to be at our old daycare as needed.

Yes and some employers have this as a benefit. We did not use my employer’s day care downtown for our child before DCPS, but we did use it for days off once the child was in school so they just commuted with me on those days.

Anonymous wrote:I just want to pop in to say that while, yes, this is a pain and a big expense, it’s till not nearly the cost of a full time nanny. Our full time nanny at $32 per hour costs us about $6400 a month all in (taxes, etc). That’s about $77k a year, and she gets 3 weeks PTO you’ve got to cover. Once my kid went to PK3 it became:

Aftercare: $100 a week, or $4000 a year
Summer camp: $600 a week x 8 weeks a year: $4800
WHN fees for 25 random days off: $1500
Nanny cost for 25 random days off: $7200

Now, that’s not zero for sure, but $18k is a LOT less than $77k.

Correct but there is a lot of energy that goes towards arranging all of that and staying on top of it and whatnot. If I could afford it, I would keep one on for house and childcare. Plus, OP- any plans to have more children?