Anonymous wrote:Because a child will eventually go to kindergarten is no reason to thrust him into daycare now! He'll eventually go off to college too so why send him away now?

This! We have a nanny share and are sending the nanny and the kids to classes (4 per week, about 6 hours in total) so the kids get used to being with other kids and in an institutional environment, but if it's up to me, we'll skip daycare altogether (maybe only do a few months leading up to kindergarten, at the same school, to ease him in).

Don't feel like you have to send him if you'd rather not!

Because a child will eventually go to kindergarten is no reason to thrust him into daycare now! He'll eventually go off to college too so why send him away now?

For two more years, the difference between nanny and daycare likely is 40-50k depending on salary and daycare rate. You need to ask yourself if the convenience for you and comfort for your son is worth that much. I was in a similar situation last year and decided to stay with nanny/pt preschool. I do not regret it.

I would nanny share to defray costs but keep the nanny.

Make sure you and DH have lots of sick days racked up - you are going to need everyone of them. And block out time to do all the things the nanny used to do - child's laundry, cleaning his room, cooking for him, etc. And remember that you can NEVER be late picking him up from daycare.

Switching to daycare since it is at least eight hours is hard on little ones used to napping at home and having down time during the day. Be prepared for some acting out.

I only had DD in daycare after her third birthday for six hours a day and it was tough on her. Her nanny had a baby and has remained a close family friend so DD still sees her all the time.

Anonymous wrote:At 3 he'll forget her in a couple weeks. Dont worry about it.

My kid must be a genius then because he still talks about his nanny who moved back to England when he was 3.

OP, make the transition slowly, if you have to and find some way to kept his nanny in his life. I know a little guy who sees his former nanny every Friday. It helps him so much because he know exactly when he will see her again.

Keep the Nanny and put him in preschool a couple of days a week.

At 3 he'll forget her in a couple weeks. Dont worry about it.

I will also say that in the grand scheme of things, one more year (or even two more years) of paying the nanny, if that's what you decide to do, is not the end of the world. Are you planning to have more children, though? Do you imagine needing her for them?

He's 3 now, and will be almost 4 in the fall. It will be much easier for him to understand where she is than it was when he was 2. Also, as another poster said, maybe you can have a transition period where she comes sometimes. And maybe she'd be willing to do a regular babysitting night for awhile.

I think he will get over it faster than you think, especially because he's already started the transition this year with part time pre-school.

Another idea would be to sign him up for a few weeks of 5-day-a-week camp this summer to see how he does on that schedule.

This is a pretty common scenario. Pretty much anyone with a nanny eventually reaches a point when the family no longer needs the nanny's services.

In our case, we kept employing the nanny until our youngest started kindergarten at age 5. But it was a huge stretch financially due to the fact that we were also paying pre-school tuition. Our nanny evolved from solely childcare to helping with family meals (as a way to fill the time while our kids were in pre-school), doing the grocery shopping and a lot of errands.

Good luck to you. Whenever you make the transition, it is difficult because the whole family forms a strong bond with the nanny. (We are still friends with our former nannies and are friends on Facebook, and we still call them for weekend babysitting.)

Anonymous wrote:We did this, with a wonderful nanny, when DS was 2 and it was a huge mistake. DS was sick ALL THE TIME and missed his nanny so much that he used to cry himself to sleep.

DS eventually got used to daycare but I still think we made a big mistake. His rate of learning took a nosedive and he still isn't potty trained at 3.5. Whenever I go to daycare I always see some kid sobbing his eyes out with no one to comfort him/her and it keeps me up at night wondering if my son has been in that position.

However, his nanny does still see him once a week and he facetimes with her during the week. We all survived but...

3 is a much better age to transition your child to daycare than 2 and you may not have any of the same problems that we did. If you can honestly not afford preschool and a nanny, then you don't have much of an option.

OP here. Thanks for the insight. Fortunately, he is potty-trained (thanks in large part to our nanny), so that shouldn't be an issue. But I think that it will be devastating to him to not see her every day. Last summer, she took a two-week vacation, and he asked about her all the time.

We did this, with a wonderful nanny, when DS was 2 and it was a huge mistake. DS was sick ALL THE TIME and missed his nanny so much that he used to cry himself to sleep.

DS eventually got used to daycare but I still think we made a big mistake. His rate of learning took a nosedive and he still isn't potty trained at 3.5. Whenever I go to daycare I always see some kid sobbing his eyes out with no one to comfort him/her and it keeps me up at night wondering if my son has been in that position.

However, his nanny does still see him once a week and he facetimes with her during the week. We all survived but...

3 is a much better age to transition your child to daycare than 2 and you may not have any of the same problems that we did. If you can honestly not afford preschool and a nanny, then you don't have much of an option.

Whatever you decide, make sure you act with sensitivity and give her enough notice. If you want her to stay as part of the family, tell her this. She can come to babysit or take your DS out of a weekend. If you choose daycare, it doesn't mean you necessarily have to say goodbye for good.

DS is 3. He has had the same nanny since he was 4 months old, when I went back to work. At the time, we had planned to put him in daycare, but we didn't get off the waitlist at any convenient centers, so we decided to just hire a nanny for a year. Our income is comfortable by most measures (but impoverished by DCUM standards), so having a nanny required pretty big budget cuts. We were able to make it work without going into debt.

Our nanny turned out to be fabulous. She is amazing with our son. We didn't want to pull him into a full-time daycare at ages 1 or 2, so each year we extended her contract by another year. This past year, we enrolled him in a part-time morning preschool (three days a week), though we pay the nanny for the same hours because she takes him there and picks him up.

We've gotten off a waitlist for a good local daycare for the fall. Our son loves being around other kids, and it really would be a huge relief for our budget (we could put much of the savings into a 529 account, for example). But we are so torn about letting our nanny go. First, we feel an incredibly loyalty to her. I'm sure she'd find a new job quickly, but I'd still feel absolutely terrible. Second, our son really is attached to her and always is so happy to see her. I worry about dropping him into a daycare center with teachers who don't seem to be nearly as caring. Then again, he eventually will need to go to kindergarten.

Anyone else face this choice? I'd just love to hear how you thought about it.