Our Daycares Saga

Its a long saga so pour a cup o’ coffee and get cozy.

On the whole, Seth and I have been really lucky with daycares. Choosing a daycare is such a monumental task because your child is going to spend more waking hours at daycare than at home with you during the week. So how do we go about finding and selecting a daycare, and who have Seth and I chosen to care for our kids?

The first daycare we used was a center. It was conveniently located close to downtown Syracuse where Seth and I worked, and served us well for Kiddo. It was easy to find day care for Kiddo and Brother because they were older – it’s the really little ones (under 2) that it’s so hard to find daycare for.

So the center we chose was absolutely great for Kiddo, but Brother, with his behaviors, got expelled really quickly for trying to kill two children. He tried to suffocate a little boy and tried to strangle an older girl. At the time he firmly believed there were zombies inside of them that he needed to kill. Remember, Brother was six years old at the time. The day that happened was the day we knew he couldn’t stay with us and needed a higher level of care. We’d been suspecting that almost since he came to us but that cinched it. If he couldn’t stay in daycare we couldn’t have him with us because Seth and I both worked full time at that time. Sigh. It hurts to think about how sick Brother was back then. I’m so intensely proud of him for how far he’s come and thrilled that he is doing so much better these days.

Anywho, after Brother left, Kiddo stayed at that daycare. One of the reasons we had chosen a center was so that Kiddo could be in pre-K because she had just turned four. Her pre-K teachers were amazing. It was a man and a woman, and both were compassionate, kind, loving people who were insanely good with a room full of rambunctious four-year-olds. Kiddo got SUPER attached to her Miss Natalie in particular, which was so good to see. We always worry about attachment issues with our kids and it was reassuring to know Kiddo could get attached to someone. Miss Natalie even babysat Kiddo a few times outside of daycare.

The director of that daycare at the time was great and shockingly was trauma informed. I’ll use that phrase from time to time and it means that the person has had training in what happens to kids when they experience trauma, and what behaviors may emerge, and how to deal with those behaviors in a compassionate and helpful way rather than just punishing kids for misbehaving. Kiddo has her own set of behaviors – never as severe as Brother’s, but sometimes pretty dang challenging. She got written up a few times, requiring us to sit down with the director to go over what had happened and strategize as to how to prevent that sort of behavior in the future. We loved that daycare the whole time that first director was there as she was a good partner to work with, and a good leader.

Unfortunately, that director got shuffled to another location and after that we had a mixed bag of rotating directors and assistant directors. Some were quite good but didn’t last long. Some were less good. And we felt like the lack of consistent strong leadership made things slide.

Gronckle went to that daycare which worked out ok. They once made a mistake and fed him the wrong formula despite our having brought in bottles of the correct formula. He got a bit sick from it but thankfully not super sick. But that incident was a bit alarming – what if his allergies had been more severe? Yikes. Overall though, he was a healthy rambunctious toddler who was popular with the staff and who thrived there.

Then we sent Mouse there and holy Hannah, it was a rapid downhill slide. She had a very strict set of instructions for how she could be handled because she had such severe medical issues. We passed along the instructions to the staff in her room. But they couldn’t keep consistent staffing in that room and didn’t train new people sometimes at all. When she first got there and was projectile vomiting after feedings they kept telling us she had to go home and couldn’t come back the next day despite the doctors’ assurance that the vomiting was not a sign of an illness that was contagious. That was supremely frustrating as I couldn’t get even two consecutive days in the office. There were limits on how fast a swing could be set to swing for her – she had to stay at a low level of motion because of her head injury – and we came in and found the swing set on high with her in it. That was straight up dangerous. Once we figured out she needed special formula, they mixed up her formula like they had done with Gronckle, and for Mouse the consequences were much more severe. We kept trying to work with the staff in that room and making complaints and the daycare finally put one stable staff person in that room who knew all of Mouse’s needs so we had hope it was going to improve.

Then the county abruptly told us she could no longer go to that daycare because of regulatory violations at that center. The county gave us one day of notice that we had to move Mouse to another daycare. I took yet another day off work and kept Mouse home with me and started making phone calls to daycares seeking a place for her.

I called thirty seven daycares in two days. All I got was a crying jag because I was so frustrated and panicked.

I finally called Kiddo’s old case worker, who has remained a good friend and amazing resource for us, and told her we were going to have to disrupt Mouse’s placement if we didn’t find a daycare for her STAT. She came through for us as always. She knew of a licensed daycare that takes DSS payments that doesn’t advertise because she doesn’t need to, and with whom the caseworker had had good experiences. That daycare just happened to have an opening for a child under 18 months. Just like that, Mouse had a place at a new daycare.

And that daycare is a gem! The woman who runs it is named Pam, and she’s from the Dominican Republic. It’s a bilingual daycare, and Pam is smart and sophisticated and loves kids like crazy. She’s also insanely patient because not only did she take care of Mouse brilliantly, she also took care of PB&J, and those two are a handful. Pam is the one who labeled Jelly “spicy,” which is a term that stuck for her. All Jelly’s service providers agreed it suited her. And Pam loved that spicy toddler to bits.

Unfortunately we had to stop using Pam once the twins went home because I stopped working downtown and Seth’s classes went online because of Covid and it was too far for us to drive a child on a daily basis. It’s 20+ minutes from our house, and that’s a lot of time and miles that we don’t need. I still miss Pam because she’s flat-out amazing. She texts to say hi every once in a while and who knows. Maybe once Seth is working as a nurse in a downtown hospital, we’ll use her again. For Black and Latino kids especially, Pam’s is the perfect place.

Tiny didn’t go to daycare for a long time when she first came to us because she was too sick and not eating and needed to be basically force fed pediasure with a syringe every hour, then every 2 hours, then every 2 1/2 hours, and so on. And I quit my job downtown and wound up unemployed for 4 months so that worked out perfectly. Once she was finally healthy enough to go to daycare and I started working again, I once again started the process of seeking a place for her. She was 2 though, which makes it way easier to find a spot. And once again we got lucky – we found Debbie and her son Randy who run a great in-home daycare only about 5 minutes from our house. Tiny is spoiled rotten there and Debbie takes amazing care of us.

Tiny is only in daycare half days (mornings) right now because that’s all we can afford. Since Seth is in school rather than working, the county doesn’t pay for daycare directly – the law has a flaw in it and doesn’t cover daycare for students, and the county is wicked short on funds right now especially because of Covid so they don’t have spare cash to make an exception. We nearly got ourselves fired for arguing with them about it. Sigh. Oh well. Lesson learned. But that is a state law that needs changing, STAT. I’m not working quite full time yet anyway, so it works out, but as I’m getting busier we need more daycare hours but can’t really afford them. This last semester of Seth’s schooling should get interesting as my work levels are ramping up pretty rapidly, but of course I’m not getting paid for the work yet. Thank heavens I work from home and everyone so far is forgiving of a shrill toddler voice in the background on phone calls! And Debbie has been super flexible and has helped us out in a couple of pinches, too. We’ll manage to juggle it. We always do!