Monday, December 22, 2008

Decline in Day Care?

I'm sure Barack Obama will have a day care subsidy somewhere in his stimulus economic recovery plan to combat the decrease in day care use.

In the Prince George's County community of Riverdale Park, town officials have noted a distressing sign of the national economic downturn: more children left home alone to fend for themselves by working parents too strapped to afford child care...

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Phyllis Waters, president of the Professional Child Care Provider Network of Prince George's County. "You're seeing people just dropping out. . . . They're taking them out of day care and putting them into homes with grandmothers and neighbors and whoever else."

For families with young children, day-care costs can rival a rent or mortgage payment, with an average that can approach almost $1,000 a month for one infant at a child-care center. But as hard times hit home, advocates and parents worry about what children stand to lose in the scaling back, both in early education and, even more, in safety.

$1,000 per month for day care? What are they doing during that time? Teach 9-month-olds the Gettysburg Address?

When I used day care, I always preferred home care to institutionalized care because home care most resembles a family. Workers come and go with alarming frequency at big day care centers. But a woman who interacts with your child in a home setting creates a more positive experience, at least, in my opinion. Nor did any of my kids suffer developmentally because they weren't reading at 3 or doing long division by the time they hit kindergarten. I always thought school was supposed to be the place where they learned these things. And kindergarteners who can't read The Tales of Despereaux aren't a cause for alarm; if the same child can't read that book by fifth grade, maybe there's a reason to worry.

I find it amusing that day care supporters shun the idea that aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers are qualified to lovingly care for their own relatives. What, exactly, does a child get from care from a stranger that is more beneficial than spending extra time with Grandma and Grandpa? My only regret is that my kiddoes didn't get to spend even MORE time with their grandparents. Heck, I wish I'd gotten to do that.