Daycares — and Waiting Lists

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A traffic sign showing WAITHow insane are the waitlists for daycares in your area — and how many layers of backup plans did you have in case you didn’t get in on time? What was your best resource for finding a good daycare worth waiting for — friends, parents’ listserv, neighbors, mommy friends, etc? When did you really start to get anxious about it, and how did you manage the anxiety? We’ve talked broadly about other childcare arrangements, but not specifically about daycares yet.

I’ll admit that I did little to no research on daycares in our area, relying almost entirely on the recommendation of one of my brother’s friends. Anyway, they recommended one specific daycare, which I toured when I was five months pregnant (around April 2011), and we were added to the waiting list for part time attendance.

After Jack was born and I figured out that I couldn’t do this “SAHM while blogging” thing, we notified the school that we’d accept a full-time position as well.

We got the call that there was finally a part-time spot for us in March 2013. TWO YEARS LATER — and bam, we were finally in daycare. Yeouch. (We found childcare in the interim through sitters and amazing family, and when we finally got into daycare we added it to the mix instead of substituting it for something else.)

How about you ladies — did you have to wait a really long time to get into your preferred daycare? When did you first sign up for daycare or start thinking about it generally? (If you’d include your general location and/or city, that would probably greatly help the discussion!)

(Pictured: WAIT, originally uploaded to Flickr by JBrazito.)

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My firm sponsors a Bright Horizons daycare in downtown LA. So we get priority on the waitlist there — which is a huge relief. I still put my name down super early though, at about 12 weeks. For “community” individuals (i.e., their employer isn’t a sponsor), the waitlist is a whopping two years. Just goes to show that quality child care is an unmet need in DTLA. And, it is still very expensive.

We also have a backup childcare benefit through Bright Horizons — 20 days of subsidized backup care for sick care, traveling, elder care, you name it. http://www.brighthorizons.com/programs/back-up-care. You might ask your employer if they offer this – it isn’t well publicized at my firm, although the daycare certainly is.

I’m late to this thread, but figured I’d chime in anyway. I missed the memo with baby #1 that infant daycare around here (DC suburbs) is ridiculous. We put ourselves on the list at several centers when I was about 6 months pregnant, but did not make it to the top of any of them before DH and I were both back at work (in fact we STILL haven’t made it to the top of some). So we hired a nanny, which was expensive but convenient. Transitioned to a nanny share a few months later, which was less convenient and not much less expensive. For a variety of reasons, we transitioned to an in-home daycare when my son was a little more than a year old. I called around several places and found a few with openings for the next month — all were cheaper than the big centers, and obviously the waiting lists weren’t an issue… I don’t know why I didn’t think of that a lot sooner.

Anyway, around that time, we found out I was pregnant with #2, and put BOTH kids on the wait list for another center we hadn’t considered the first time. Literally, the daycare center knew I was pregnant before my mom did. We should have a spot in that center this summer, a year later, and plan on taking it. Although I generally like my current daycare provider, I’m finding that with only a handful of kids, one or two kids leaving makes a BIG difference in my son’s experience. Right now he just has a tiny baby and two little girls keeping him company because one boy transitioned to preschool and the other boy his age is on vacation. Also, only one of the teachers is showing up because of how few kids there are, but she can’t take the bigger kids outside because of the baby (plus the girls would rather do art projects). That means a lot less running around during the day, which means a lot more headaches for me in the evening. no bueno.

Oh yeah, and daycare for both kids at the new center works out to more than $33k per year. Still less than a nanny (and without the administrative headaches), but yikes. I can’t wait til they’re both in school; we’ll be rich!

We live in Chicago. We were in a nanny share until our daughter was a year old, and then we realized the cost of a nanny would grow (raises, etc.) while daycare costs would shrink (as the child aged into rooms with more kids to teachers). We then began researching daycares and discovered that around 15 months things started to open up (again due to the ratio change in classrooms) and the wait lists were shorter than the insane 2 -3 year lists some infant rooms have at the in-demand centers. We got lucky that a facility we liked opened a new center and we were able to get a spot in the toddler room. I have heard that the wait list is quite long now and I’m hopeful that if/when we have a 2nd, sibling priority will help us.

In a small town, and for kid #1 both the daycare centers told me we could be on months long waiting lists, but then a few families moved out of town and we got in at the last minute for an infant. For kid #2, one of the centers had stopped taking infants, so our center was the only game in town, and the waiting list was apparently long – we got a spot only because of sibling preference. The daycare is a non-profit, and even a member of the board who had sent 2 kids there couldn’t get a spot for his 3rd baby until she was 9 months old since he no longer had a child there for sibling preference. It has actually made me strongly consider that if we are going to go for #3, we need to do so in order to have it before #2 is ready to leave for kindergarten, because we would then lose the sibling preference.

There is another new chain center that is cheaper and (IMO) lower quality – much more of a “holding pen” daycare than preschool that just opened in our area, so most of the desperate families put their kids there as infants and then switch to our center once they are 18 months and can get a spot in the classrooms with space due to higher kid to teacher ratios. From what I’ve heard, its a fine enough place – kids will be taken care of, fed and safe – but it’s not amazing like our current school is, and they have a very high staff turnover rate.

I’m on the Westside of LA. I’m glad we didn’t live here when my child was a young baby because there is basically no infant daycare, aside from home daycares, which were not my preference, although I know other people love home daycare. We moved here when my son was about 1, and the few centers that accepted infants had 18 month plus wait lists. (Now 4, he is still on one of these waitlists..). The preschool scene can also be challenging, though not quite as bad due to higher ratios. In fact, we lucked into a spot at our preschool during the summer because another family had moved, even though we had missed the standard application process the preceding fall.

I’m in Tokyo, where the daycare scene is a whole different story.

There are public and private centers. Everyone wants their kids in the public daycares, but they only accept kids once a year, in April (with a few accepting up to 3 infants in October as well). And competition to get in is pretty brutal–they use a points system that ranks you according to your work hours and whether or not you have family around to help.

Private centers accept kids year-round as long as there’s an opening. Some let you sign up when you’re pregnant, and some make you wait until the baby is born. There are no fees to be on the waiting lists, and you only pay an entry fee and tuition when you’ve been offered a place.

The timing with my first kid worked out so that I went back to work in April. We applied and got into a public daycare. My second was born in May and there was no way I could take an eleven month leave until public daycare entry so I signed up for as many private center waitlists as I could as soon as I knew I was pregnant. She spent two months in a private center, then got into a public center in October.

Fees are actually pretty decent. Private centers cost max $800/month for infants, and public ones charge based on your income. We pay $1200/month for fulltime care for a 3-year-old and a nine-month-old at public daycare.

Boston suburbs here, we have 3 daycares in my immediate area. As soon as we got the 12 week ultrasound/viability testing, and were comfortable that This Baby Was Happening, I called all 3 of them and did a tour. We were told that we’d have no issue securing a full-time spot for our 3 month old as long as we did a depost “soon.” I put the depost down at the daycare of our choice when I was 16w pregnant, checked in when I was ~30 weeks pregnant to confirm things were still on track, then checked in again when I had a 2 week old baby to start talking about visiting, then visited at 2 months.

I posted on this a couple weeks ago, but I’m in PNW and toured daycares at 12 weeks (January 1). I put an application fee down to reserve a spot on the waitlist of my preferred daycare. They said it usually took families about a year to get off the list. Our desired start date is October 1, when the baby will be 3 months old. They told me that’s a good time of year because they start transitioning all the classrooms up in September when school starts. Consequently, they have the most openings in the infant center in late September/early October. That facility costs $1450/month for full time (7:00 am – 6:00 pm) care.

We also got on the waitlist of another place that is a bit cheaper, but still $1390 a month. That place *almost* guaranteed us a spot for October 1st. They said that we were the first family on the list for that date, so it was pretty much a sure thing.

My mother, who still works full time, is planning on taking the month of October off. Depending on when we get into Daycare 1, she will probably watch the baby in the transition period. If we need to have the baby someplace past October, we will likely enroll in Daycare 2 until our spot opens up in Daycare 1.

In order to get this all worked out, it took HOURS of my time. Hours. I had to research facilities, call and get more information/schedule tours, tour, and make decisions. Daycare is stressful.

I had my baby during law school. I signed up on the waiting list for the on-campus day care as soon as I knew I was pregnant and got a spot when she was 4 months old. We also toured a number of chain day care centers midway through my pregnancy, and at some of them we could have secured a spot by paying a deposit of one month’s tuition.

Before law school, I worked at a prestigious private college in a fancy Northeastern town. When I was first married, I inquired about how to obtain a spot at that college’s on-campus day care. I was told that they only took waiting list sign-ups during a very short window each fall, so I should sign up as soon as I knew I was planning to get pregnant.

How timely! I was just in a fight this afternoon with a local daycare center we thought we wanted to use. I re-toured after the birth of our daughter and decided it was not for us. But they had required a $100/mo payment to keep our guaranteed spot, so we have been paying $100 a month since September to keep a spot for June, with the deposits to be applied to our first month’s tuition. We gave 4 months of notice that we won’t need the spot, and because they are so competitive I have no doubt that they will fill it. Nonetheless they are trying to keep the money we paid! If we had given little advance notice or if the daycare center was unable to fill our spot, I could understand it, but that is just not the case. So frustrating! I think I will eventually be able to strong arm them in to giving in, but WOW do these centers have the upper hand!!

We put baby down for daycare during my second trimester. The daycare agreed to hold the deposit for three months at which point it would be forfeit if baby did not register. They also at that time charges us fee for “supplies, materials etc” which my kid as an infant doesn’t seem to get. We love our daycare though and are confident our child is well cared for and happy. If we didn’t get a spot at that one daycare I would have stayed home the full year and looked at options after the first year as to how I could bring my kid to work. A lot of bad daycares where I live.

I toured centers at 7 weeks pregnant. I knew the wait lists would be long in DC, and I wanted to maximize my chance for my first-choice center. We placed our name on three wait lists, and two of the three called me with an opening about a month before I finished my maternity leave (which was about 5 months). I think it helped that I checked in throughout my leave–right after the birth, and a couple months into my leave–so that the centers knew I was serious about them. My mother’s career was in early childhood education and she directed me to naeyc.org and zerotothree.org for help in selecting centers.

We’re in Anchorage, AK. We chose to put our daughter into one of the centers on the local military base. You can’t actually go onto the list until the baby is born.
Approaching 5 months, we still didn’t have a spot, so I started looking into their home-based centers. We found one spot and took it. About a month later, the woman decided to close down. Fortunately, we hadn’t taken ourselves off the waitlist for the regular centers, so I just kept calling them until we got in. (With the military priority system, you can get bumped down the list if someone higher priority signs up.)
The military system has advantages once you get in: Low price (we voluntarily put ourselves in the highest income bracket rather than submit pay stubs, but pay around $145/week), sibling discount (though I imagine waiting for a spot to open up in a particular center will taken even longer than waiting for any spot).

We are in Pittsburgh and started researching and visiting centers a few months into the pregnancy. With that much notice here, we were able to have our choice of any of the local centers. I assume in the more affluent parts of town there may be a waitlist for the “best” schools, but we didn’t have to deal with that since we are in middle class suburbia.

I am in a large southern city and we toured the “big” daycares at the large churches when I was about 3 months pregnant. Once place actually told us that it was a 6 year waiting list because they gave siblings preference so I don’t know why they even pretended to accept new babies. We ended up with a college aged babysitter/nanny for 3 days a week and my husband took over the other days and we never looked back. We started mothers day out when he was 1 two days a week/5 hours a day. I found the mothers day out programs much easier to find without any waiting.