YES !!! I am freeeeeee

[Sarah]

I will open my daycare in about 2 months and was planning on getting school age kids since I myself have 2 age school boys.

From what I read, you don't like it? I do not want to get in a situation I will regret, and I am just getting better following a burn out in my job (not daycare) and I don't want to have a situation that will cause me to go back down the road of the burn out you know what I mean.

But I thought since I have two school age kids anyway, why not have more?

I even thought it would be great to have only school age kids. This way I would be with my daughter all day, alone and taking care of her only!

I also thought of taking 2-3 day kids max and 2-3 after school kids?

More experience sharing girls please????

My interviews will start soon and I need to know where I am going with this...

Sarah

[Spixie33]

Well....some people have good experience with school age...I just did not.
I guess I focused mainly on toddlers and accepted only 1 school age child. My own son and the dck were the same age so I thought it would be good. My daughter is 4 and the dck was 6 and my son was 6 too so I thought it would be easy money.
Personally I made a few mistakes --
Having only 1 after school child but 2-4 toddlers around (depending on the day) meant I could not focus on both age groups appropriately or entertain them with activities appropriately because I was torn.
Also....my after school dck wanted to pretend that my dc toddlers were her 'babies' and would often try to drag them around or confuse them by wanting the toddlers to call her ' mommy'. A 2 year old does not understand that a 6 year old wants to 'pretend' to be their mommy so it would inevitably end up that these 2 year olds would frantically start looking around and wondering where their real mommy is because this child kept saying the word 'mommy' to them. Also...the toddlers would become extremely frustrated that the after school child wanted to carry them or treat them like a baby. Two year olds are starting to get into this 'me do' phase and do not want to be babied.
Either way I had to worry by either telling the after school child no repeatedly and make her feel rejected from the toddlers or have the toddlers miserable that they were being treated like giant Baby Alives.
I also made the mistake of only charging $10 a day for after school. the parents told me they would only need about an hour to an hour and a half of after school care. Well....they then went and looked up my ad and checked my open hours and instead of a 4 pm pickup they picked up 5:30 on the dot at closing time from that point forward. So....I was doing 3 hours of care for $10 plus providing a huge snack
School age children also fight a lot and tattle a lot so you will constantly hear your own children and every other child get tattled on. It wears you out
And then the last thing to consider is that their appetite is larger and they are more opinionated on what they do or don't want to eat.

I know some daycares around here only do after school. One lady said she puts them all in the basement with TV and the video games or out in the backyard and that is it. I think it works for some. For me it didn't
The thing is that every child is different and every situation is different so you never know what combination will work for you