Infant Daycare near PowderHouse/Davis/Ball/Teele

[fortlotus.livejournal.com]

Like most new parents in MA, I've got serious sticker shock over the cost of daycare, especially at larger facilities (as opposed to home daycare). I'd really like to send my future baby to daycare in the neighborhood, just to avoid having to take an infant onto the T.

Bright Horizons and Kindercare are seriously expensive. Looking at the State directory of daycares, I see that some of the in-home ones are easily half the cost.

My question is: Have any of you used in-home daycare in or around Davis Sq? If so, where did you send your child, and would you recommend the place to others?

I would appreciate any additional thoughts or tips that you might have. Thanks, everyone!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

This is definitely true - backup is fairly limited. They all need to have a backup on call in case, say, the provider needs to leave in a hurry to take another kid to the emergency room or something. But that doesn't necessarily translate to sick days.

Other than one major medical issue, though (see below), I think I can count on one hand the number of times over the past 6 years ours has closed unexpectedly, and I'd still have fingers left over. No different than you'll need to deal with in a few years when your kid's in school and has to call in sick, and much less frequent.

And in terms of that one major issue - when our provider needed to close for medical reasons for a brief stretch, she set up placements for her kids at other home daycares that had a little extra space for the week, and she's hosted kids from other daycares on occasion. They all network with each other.