It's hard when you have more than one opening. I went through that last year for the first time in 8 years and I don't ever want to repeat it.

I had two I knew would be going to school in Sept so against my better judgement, I permitted one of my FT'ers to drop to PT (which I never normally do) because the plan was they would return with the baby.

So 6 FT places fill but dropped to 5.5 in February but thought even though I'd lose two more in Sept, with the PT'er returning to FT and his sibling taking one place too, I'd only have one opening come September.

Then one of mine took a year off to be with her son before he started school - so down to 4.5 and another was posted to Ontario so I lost two siblings - down to 2.5 children and this is the sole income! It sucked and no one was even coming for interview let alone filling the places. Then PT'er dad got laid off and they didn't come back to FT until the Nov. It took until January for it to pick up and thank goodness by Feb I was back up to 5 and then this August finally filled the 6th place.

The market is saturated here and lots of people working for cash or really cheap which does affect the rest of us.

I try and avoid having more than 2 born the same year so to avoid the mass vacancies come September but with my current clients, in a couple of years, I will lose 4 at the same time for Primary school.