Thursday, April 17, 2008

Switching Daycare Centers

I mentioned in yesterday's posting that we'd decided to move Jacob to Tutor Time on his second birthday so let me explain the thought process behind the decision.

Danielle was a stay at home mom for the first 18 months of Jacob's life but because she finally had to return to work we obviously needed to find a daycare center for Jacob to attend. We looked at a lot of different places but ended up choosing Tender Years for a few different reasons. The first one was that a friends sister had sent all four of her kids (that's right....4 kids. I can't imagine having more than 2 let alone 4.) there and each one of them had loved it. Some of the other reasons were that there was some continuity with the teachers (one of his teachers had been there for almost 10 years) and the location of the the center was extremely close to our house.

Jacob dealt with the transition from being at home with mom to spending the day at daycare extremely well.  The first week was a little rough as he would cry when I would drop him off, but the teachers would pick him up and console him and after a minute or two, he would be completely fine.  He adjusted so well so quickly that he wouldn't want to leave when I came to pick him up.  

The classroom he was in ranged in age from 18 months to 3 years old.  It's a pretty big range of ages for the kids but at the time we thought that being around older kids would help Jacob a little faster.  We noticed a big change right away especially in his vocabulary.  Jacob being one of the younger ones in the class was great in the beginning but we thought that it might hold back his development a little as he got older.  At this point we decided to 'shop around' for another daycare center.  

Our good friends Adam and Rina have 2 children named Sydney and Sasha.  Sydney just turned 5 and Sasha is a few weeks older than Jacob.  They'd been using Tutor Time for a little while and highly recommended it.  Danielle and I took a trip to check out the facilities and we were very impressed.  Jacob's classroom would be made up of kids between the age of 2 and 2 1/2. When the kids turn 2 1/2, they are transitioned into the next classroom which runs until age 3. I'm not exactly sure what the range of ages are for the classes after 3 but I'm not too worried about it.  It was exactly what we were looking for.  

The ultimate decision to switch daycare centers was a very tough one because of how much Jacob loved going to Tender Years and how much Tender Years loved having Jacob.  In the end, we decided that the transition may be tough for Jacob at first but he'll fit right in in no time and the fact that he knew someone in the class already (Sasha) would make it all the more easier.

How have any of you dealt with the transition from home to daycare or from one daycare center to another?  Did you struggle with the same choices that we did? 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My son is two and we were recently considering changing day care centers to a more high end center. Our center while nice is in a relatively low income area, and the building leaves something to be desired. The teachers are consitant however and he enjoys the center. We agonized over the switch for some time and ultimatly decided to leave well enough alone. I was more concerned that the transition would be orse for him than anything else. So kudos on your bravery and I am glad it went so well!

Anonymous said...

we are switching and ultimately decided to go from a center that has all private pay clients and is cleaner, more organized and seems like a happier place in general. The teachers and owner seem to just pay more attention to details and cleanliness. the place we were going to is fine for the infants but i feel like the teachers in the older room discipline a lot more harshly than i would like and there is a general feeling of chaos. the new center like i said is more upscale, only private pay clients and no state funded clients (which sounds snobby but basically i just don't want her picking up bad behaviors) we decided to do it at 1 year even though she went to the other one from 3 months to make it eaiser on her. i thought waiting until 18 mos might be harder. so we are in the process of doing that now. i hope it's the right decision.

Anonymous said...

yeah it is very hard. it is even harder to tell the old center you're leaving. i couldn't tell them the real reason - because of the nature of the way the place looked, the inexperience of the teachrs, etc... so i just said my work schedule was changing.