Needing to vent about selfish daycare parents.

[zen39]

Going to take the side of the parents on this one sorry. They contracted with you for a service which you are no longer able to provide. I get that the circumstances are beyond your control but they are looking at this from a business standpoint not a social one. Empathy has nothing to do with it. They are working and need daycare. If you can no longer provide the service for whatever reason they are free to go elsewhere. Not sure what the complaint is. Yes they sound selfish and not too concerned for the welfare of their child or totally naive about the spread of viruses. Are you expecting these parents to pay for the days that you are closed. If your child needs rest then fine, it means a tv day which will distract your own child from their illness too. When an illness goes through my house I give parents the option of staying home if they want/can and then restructure the day to be all freeplay, restricted activities depending on what I want to sanitize or how everyone including me is feeling. Mom of 4 though so maybe that makes a difference since even without daycare I would be catering to several so the diversion for my own healthy ones was always nice leaving me to cuddle with the sickies.

I get what your saying but I have to completely disagree with you. For me personally, I explained to parents when they signed up that I was not a daycare center, rules are different here. If I have a sick day or one of my kids has a contagious illness and I need to shut down than that parent is required to find alternate care. When they sign up, I explained they need to have back up caregiving for these kinds of circumstances. I don't charge them for this time off. They can use the money they would have paid me to pay someone else if need be.

It has nothing to do with watching 2 or 4 kids. It's putting the needs of your child first. I would rather say no to parents then shut my child off into another room for the day. I don't close down for just any illness, but for a highly contagious and painful spot illness, I would be crazy not to. Considering that things like this happen so rarely is it really unreasonable to close down for a couple of days? I don't think so.

[Judy Trickett]

I get what your saying but I have to completely disagree with you. For me personally, I explained to parents when they signed up that I was not a daycare center, rules are different here. If I have a sick day or one of my kids has a contagious illness and I need to shut down than that parent is required to find alternate care. When they sign up, I explained they need to have back up caregiving for these kinds of circumstances. I don't charge them for this time off. They can use the money they would have paid me to pay someone else if need be.

It has nothing to do with watching 2 or 4 kids. It's putting the needs of your child first. I would rather say no to parents then shut my child off into another room for the day. I don't close down for just any illness, but for a highly contagious and painful spot illness, I would be crazy not to. Considering that things like this happen so rarely is it really unreasonable to close down for a couple of days? I don't think so.

Yep. When you sign on at a home daycare then there are certain things you accept. And one of those things is that there WILL be times during the year that you do not have available daycare.

Parents want all the pluses of home daycare - smaller numbers of kids, (usually) healthier foods AND, let's face it - MUCH cheaper fees. Well, you get what you get. There is a reason big centres charge more and of those things they charge for is a guarantee of 100% service on EVERY day they claim to be open.

And, let's face it. If a daycare centre had 40% of it's kids with an virus then WOULD close because the health unit would force them to. Well, if you only care for 4 or 5 kids and 2 of them have the virus then that's the same ratio.