suze@terak.UUCP (Suzanne Barnett) (02/22/86)
I posted a query on infant child care locations a couple of weeks ago. There are a lot of good reasons for having the baby cared for near work, and an equal number of good reasons for choosing a location near home. Pretty much everyone said to go with my "gut feeling." > My husband and I work in opposite corners of Phoenix (I in the > NE, he in the SW). We live in the SE corner. Work is about 45 > minutes from home for both of us. After our child is born, I > will be returning to work. Should I look for some sort of > child care near our home, near my office, or near his? Travel > time between our offices is a minimum of 1hr, 15 min. > > Thanx! Here is a summary of all the responses I received. **************************************************************** From noao!seismo!decvax!decwrl!glacier!oliveb!tymix!whitehur: I would suggest finding the best possible child care, putting preference on close to home. If you have confidence in the care giver the distance will not be so great. If something really terrible happens they will get your child to a hospital faster then you could leave work, pick them up, etc. no matter where the child care is located. Talk to the doctor about medical release forms if you are really worried. My preference on close to home deals with how much time you want to spend in the car, during rush hour, with a tired hungery child. Remember that the location you are choosing will be used for several years. **************************************************************** From ihnp4!ihlpa!ibyf: Hi! This is your old friend Dave again. Well, baby sitter problems huh? Okay, I'm 35 minutes from home (at work) and so is my wife. The baby-sitter is right around the corner from our house. Okay, so were not real close to the kids, but that's why we have a baby sitter. If something happened to the kids that needed immediate attention, I would hope (actually I know this) that the baby sitter would take care of the situation, and then call me at work. After all, the sitter is a "substitute parent" because you can't be there. This brings up the question of trust but that's something else. A second consideration is the traffic. I don't know your particular situation but I am sometimes scared when I see how people drive on my way home. I don't like submitting myself to that, much less my kids. With them close to the house, I get to the sitters, get them and I'm home in 2 minutes. No traffic no expletives flowing out of my mouth in front of the kids, NO HASSLE! (Of course the same applies in the morning) Also, when the kids are a little older, they can walk to the sitters house from school (we live almost across the street from it) or home from there after I get home. All in all, I'd rather have them close to home than close to work, I mean you have to go home anyway, right? Say you want to stop after work to "pick up a few things". No hassle of dragging the kids along. Get your shopping done, then get the kids, and your home. Well, I've got to be going. Talk to you soon. Dave Scott, ihnp4!ihlpa!ibyf **************************************************************** From ihnp4!akgua!psuvax1!burdvax!sue: I have a 20 month old in a daycare about 10 minutes away from work. I had him in a daycare literally across the street from work when he was an infant (we started him at 10 weeks). That was terrific, because I was still nursing him. Unfortunately, the daycare developed problems, and we moved him. When we first started him in daycare, there was little question about whether he should be near home or work, because of nursing. (I always spent my lunch time at the daycare, which was really nice.) When we decided to move him, we did have the decision, although ours was a little different than yours. I live about 30 mins away from work, my husband lives about 5 minutes away from work. Our final decision to have him close to me was based on two things. 1) I just plain old felt better having him physically close to me - I enjoy the time we have in the car together, and, although the situation has (thankfully) never arisen, if there was an emergency, I want to be close by. 2) We found a terrific daycare. It is not really convienent for me to drop him there - by the time I go 10 mins out of the way, drop him off, and 10 mins back, I've added 1/2 hour to my commute, bringing it close to 1 hr. But the daycare is worth it. He loves it there (as evidenced by the fact that sometimes when we are at home (I only work 3 days a week) and ask him what he wants to do today, he says 'day care'!). The main problem we have run into by having him close to me as opposed to close to home is that I have been traveling more recently, due to his being older, and it really is pretty much out of the question for my husband to take him to daycare. It simply takes too much time out of the day. We are fortunate to have both sets of grandparents in the vacinity, and they usually help my husband with the baby when I travel. So, to sum it up, consider these things when making your decision. 1) your gut feeling 2) the location of quality child care 3) are you nursing? 4) are you likely to travel, and if so, what alternative arrangements can be made. 5) If an emergency occurs, what is the quality of the hospital your child will be taken to. (The one near work is better than the one near home in our case!) Hope this helps! Sue Mardinly, SDC, a burroughs co, Paoli, Pa. **************************************************************** From ihnp4!watmath!watmps!anewton: Hi. We have a four year old son and I've been working full time since he was 7 months old (part time since he was 5 months old). My husband and I both live in Kitchener and work in Waterloo. Now that doesn't mean much since we both live 15 minutes from work, but I thought long and hard about where to look for a sitter for David. I decided near work for exactly the reasons you talked about. It only takes about 10 minutes to get to the sitter, I can drop him off on my way to work and pick him up on my way home, if there is an emergency, I'm closer (admittedly not much, but still closer). I also found that I would have to leave David with a sitter for far longer (drop him off at 7:30, pick him up at 5:00) if he went to a sitter near home. Because of the distances involved, your case would be worse! My suggestion is a sitter near work if you can find one that you're comfortable with. We had the extra added bonus of having a daycare on campus that David has been attending for the last year. That has been wonderful. In the best of all possible worlds, all companies would provide some kind of daycare facilities for their workers! Now that we're facing kindergarten in the fall, a whole new problem has arisen: where should David attend school? Near home? Near my work? What does he do after school and before? These problems seem to go on forever! Good luck. Go with your gut feeling for daycare. It's the only way you'll manage to work comfortably and happily. **************************************************************** From ihnp4!lanl!sct: I would opt for the location nearest your work place. In the event of a problem you would probably want to be there. If the problem is not serious then the extra time it takes for your husband would not be critical. I base this on my wife's attitude: If the kid gets really sick she wants to be with it, if it just has a cold or slight fever she feels comfortable having me take the time off. As far as day care centers vs. baby sitters you will find that the problem with baby sitters is that if they get sick, want to go on vacation, etc., then you're stuck finding an alternative. We got our kids into a day care center as soon as they were old enough. **************************************************************** From noao!bellcore!mhuxn!segs: I'm on my third child now (she's 5 months old and beautiful) and my husband and I also work full time and 45 minutes from our home (well he is probably more like 35 minutes when it's not rush hour). We've always had a sitter in our home or had the kids at a home near our home. I think that leads to more equal feelings about who should go home early when needed. Actually, though that happens very rarely, and never that I can think of when the kid is in our home. Even if a child starts to cough or look sick or something, the sitter can handle putting her/him to bed and administering Tylenol. Susan Slusky mhuxn!segs **************************************************************** From noao!seismo!lll-crg!varian!madvax!susan: I am a single mother, so I didn't get the option of close to papa - but I wouldn't have chosen it anyway. I found a family day care home very close to work where the provider encouraged me to come at lunch time and nurse my baby. I really liked that. I got to know the other day care kids as well as the provider's family, and I got to keep in touch with my kid & comfortably keep nursing. Unfortunately this woman moved out of the area, so now my kid is close to home (about 40 min. away, but 5 min. from home walking). Beth is 1 1/2 now, which is very very different from being teeny. Now I usually go home and walk over to get her after work. It makes it easier on both of us to have some wind down time walking home. Good luck, and enjoy! Susan Finkelman {zehntel,amd,fortune,resonex,rtech}!varian!susan **************************************************************** From noao!seismo!decvax!tektronix!tekecs.TEK!janr: I've dealt with this one differently with different of my kids. I think the most important thing is to look for the best childcare situation, the one that you'll feel best about leaving your child in. Then, all things being equal, there are plusses and minuses on both sides. If the childcare is near your husband's job, you are spared some of the hassles of getting the kid out the door in the morning -- when I first went back to work, it really helped to have my husband getting Pete mostly dressed and in the car -- it meant that I only had to get myself out the door, which seemed hard enough. Also, it meant that I got home first and could have a few minutes to relax and get dinner organized before they got home. Later, Pete was at a school where I could take him, and I enjoyed the drive to and from work with him very much -- it was our best conversation time. The only real disadvantage of having childcare close to a job and relatively far from home is what happens when you change jobs. Good luck. **************************************************************** From noao!hao!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!cca!leo: I chose to have my daughter near home. She would be nearer her pediatrician and in a neighborhood that was familiar to her. At the time I made that decision, I was on a two-hour mass-transit commute and about a 30-45 minute drive from home. I didn't like the feeling that I was physically "far away" from Lauren, but I had to put her overall well-being first. Lauren is now nearly four years old, and is a part of our neighborhood even though I am working. I place a lot of emphasis on feeling a part of the whole since my own childhood was a series of moves and being the only kid who went to a Catholic school - being the new kid on the block and the oddball who was "too good for 'regular' school" didn't do a lot for my self-esteem and was rather lonely. Lauren plays with other children in the neighborhood, takes tap and ballet lessons with the girl next door, and knows people even I don't know (I've met some of my neighbors in settings outside our neighborhood because they've seen Lauren and come by to say "hello" to her and introduce them- selves to me.) I would make the same decision again. BTW, I have been a single parent from the start, so I didn't have to be concerned about Lauren's father's employment location. (He panics when she has an accident, anyway, and nearly faints at the sight of blood. So much for the image of the "strong" father.) Louise E. Osterman, Computer Corporation of America **************************************************************** We haven't yet decided what to do in the long run. However, the short run is tempered with having my step kids with us for the summer. I feel it important that they view the baby as their sibling. We usually hire a nanny/babysitter to take care of them in our home during the day; provide transportation to swimming lessons and various summer activities; fix lunch and sometimes breakfast for them; etc. This summer we'll add changing diapers, bottles, etc. to the previous duties. If this came at a different time, rather than just about the time the kids will be arriving, my gut feeling would be "I want my baby near me." The chances of finding quality child care near my husband's work is not, I think very high. Near our home or my work I think it will be easier to find quality care. Other reasons I would choose near me are partly because I plan to breastfeed, and could nurse the baby during lunch rather than having to express milk, as well as simply spending time with him/her, and partly because I don't know any care giver well enough yet to trust them. If close, I could truly drop in at any time during the day to see how my child is treated. This is not an easy thing to do when I'm 45 minutes from the baby. There are two varying opinions on traffic time with the child. I think I'd have to try it both ways to decide which I prefer (spending time with the child in the car vs saving us both an annoyance and possible danger). Both views are certainly valid. What we'll do after my step kids leave is very much up in the air. It's a bit far in the future to plan for yet, we'll have to see what we think then, after having the baby cared for at home for a couple of months after I return to work. -- Suzanne Barnett-Scott uucp: ...{decvax,ihnp4,noao,savax,seismo}!terak!suze CalComp/Sanders Display Products Division 14151 N 76th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (602) 998-4800