I am bit annoyed by the current situation with my daycare provider deciding to switch her hours. I found her on this website 6months ago and her posted hours of service were 7:30-5:30 pm which is pretty standard I think. One concern I had about this provider when we met her was that this was her first time running a daycare. She has 2 little kids of her own so she wanted to stay home. She has her ECE and has worked as a teacher but IMO running a daycare is something different. Anyways, turned out that my husband knew her from before through some friends, her Ad description sounded very appealing and the place was nice so we went with her. We explained very clearly that we have long commutes so our pick up times would be 5:30-6pm. She agreed. We started in January and I have to say I was pretty good at picking my son up, I was usually there no later than 5:15 and sometimes even earlier if I could. A month ago or so she asked me if I could manage my work hours to pick up my son by 4:45 pm during the summer as she wanted to take her older son to soccer. Of course I could not accommodate. I can get off earlier sometimes but it is not something that I can do on a regular basis. She was obviously upset but really I could not do it. At that time I was already pregnant with my second one, early stages but showing a big belly. My pregnancy was quite obvious but I did not officially told her because really I don't have to, I was still in my first 15 weeks and nothing was changing for her. Well, I guess she saw her big chance of getting out of the agreement assuming that a) I would pull out my son from daycare when baby 2 arrived or b) my hours would change or c) maybe will switch to part-time, which none of these options were in my plans. When she finally asked about what my plans were and I said that nothing would be changing in September when baby is due, she was visibly surprised and noticeably disappointed, which caught me off-guard as I thought this would be the ideal situation for any other provider. Then truth came out as she said she was sure that I would pull him out and if not she would have to think about it because she had been advertising already a spot (not my kid's but another one) and has received a lot of responses and these people are teachers, so it means shorter hours for her, and everyday she has to stay at least half an hour extra because of my son, and her boy cannot go to baseball this summer, and bla bla bla. Well, it was pretty obvious that she was unhappy so I just simply replied to her to let me know and I would find another place for my kid. This was a Friday so on the Monday she apologized for the way she approached the conversation (completely lack of tact for sure) and said she hoped we could work something out. We did not, she wants the shorter hours and I cannot do it for several reasons that I explained to her. So basically she is backing out on her agreement, and we are now looking for another provider. Nothing we can do except move on but I wanted to share my experience, for those parents looking at home day cares. Really insist and outline the kind of hours you will have and if there is a likelihood of changing, particularly with inexperienced providers. They figure that because they like children,have an ECE and want to stay home, opening a daycare is a great idea but underestimate the amount of work and responsibility it is. I realize that not everybody is like that thankfully.