Our 5 month old daughter has been in a home daycare for 3 months now. We trust the daycare provider and in general are quite happy. The only problem is unreliability. She calls us to say she is sick, has heating problems, etc at least twice a month. Last month she had strep for a week and next month is taking her annual early childhood classes so needs a week off. My husband and I are hard-working business people and are having a hard time finding back ups for these frequent cancellations. We're currently looking at other daycares, but it's difficult to find one in for an infant in the city. Any suggestions.
I'm not sure where in the city you work and if something in the loop would be convenient, but our 9 month old daughter has been going to the Honey Tree Learning Center in the loop for the last 6 months and she loves it.
That's not acceptable, especially since a baby can be expected to also need a lot of days at home the first year due to illness.
Both of my kids have been in (different) home daycares, and in a total of 5 years now, the only time I've been left in the lurch was when our daycare provider was put on emergency bedrest the same week her assistant quit!
I would never really consider a home daycare that didn't have a fulltime assistant available. Things happen, but unless it's a medical emergency, you need to be able to rely on them to be there for you every day (except for scheduled vacations, which home daycares do usually have). But I've been very happy with both of the home daycare providers we've had our kids with, and I think home daycare does have a lot of advantages.
ugggg.... I feel your pain. That's ultimately why I switched from a home daycare to a center.
I'm in the burbs but there are two places you can go to get some information:
Illinois Child Care resource and referral site: http://www.ilchildcare.org/
National Association for the Education of Young Children (places here have all been accredited above and beyond the state guidelines - you'll probably pay a bit more for them because they have a bit "more") www.naeyc.org
Good Luck.
I take my one-year-old to Childtime in Evanston/St. Francic Hospital. We live in Uptown and it's only about 20 minutes max to get there. Plus, they've been taking great care of our little Lauren since she was only 6-weeks old. You can schedule a tour with Lori or Trish by calling ###-###-####. Good luck! We ended up here because we couldn't find anything in the city either!
