daycare question

For those of you who use daycare, what do you think is a proper ratio of childcare worker to babies in the infant room? I'm finding that many places around here do 1:4 and I'm wondering if that's typical or if I should be looking for something more like 1:3 or less. Anyone have thoughts on this?

 

Our daycare and the ones I researched all had 1:3 for infants...since I don't have any other experience, I think this is a great ratio, and this way the caretaker is able to give proper attention to each baby. I would find a 1:3 but it also depends on what's available and the overall state of the daycare too. Good luck!

 

Im not sure whats "typical" but I think to myself, ok Im their mother and the 2 of them are hard for me...someone else whose not their mother is going to have a hard time taking care of them the way I do, not to mention with other kids running around.

We take ours to an in-home care provider. Primarily she has our twins, but if she does have other kids she will watch a 3-5 year old, not other infants.
What kind of care do you think they would get if that person had 1 or 2 MORE babies? Are you comfortable with that?

 

Maryland's rule for at-home daycare is 2 infants per provider.

 

Child to teacher ratios are governed by the state - a licensed daycare MUST meet this ratio. California's ratio is 4:1 for infants under 9 months, so the majority of centers will meet that, only a few will exceed it.
Keep in mind that a 4:1 ratio in a center based daycare will usually mean 2 teachers with up to 8 infants at a time! 8 babies and 4 hands - you do the math!

If you do find a ratio of less than 4:1, you'll probably be paying a bit more for the smaller ratio. Best of luck!

(Source for ratios - http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/statedata/statepr...ate=California)

 

QUOTE(BounceTigger @ Dec 4 2008, 03:50 PM) [snapback]1097628[/snapback]
Child to teacher ratios are governed by the state - a licensed daycare MUST meet this ratio. California's ratio is 4:1 for infants under 9 months, so the majority of centers will meet that, only a few will exceed it.
Keep in mind that a 4:1 ratio in a center based daycare will usually mean 2 teachers with up to 8 infants at a time! 8 babies and 4 hands - you do the math!

If you do find a ratio of less than 4:1, you'll probably be paying a bit more for the smaller ratio. Best of luck!

(Source for ratios - http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/statedata/statepr...ate=California)

thank you for that link. i'm shocked that georgia allows for a 6:1 ratio under 18 months. i would never feel okay with that.

 

It's 4:1 in Wisconsin, but really, it's not that bad. I watch the teachers a lot and they have everything under control. Usually in the infant room, the teachers are very experienced (at least at the good centers) and have been there for years. Those teachers have more experience with babies than I do as the mom. My boys are in the infant room that goes up to 8-9 mo. The babies are at completely different ranges in the spectrum for development from a 6 wk old to an 8-9 mo old. The older ones are a little more independent compared to the 3 mo olds. And one thing to consider is when you're home, you're also probably doing household chores at the same time as taking care of the kids. The teachers aren't doing laundry, cooking meals, etc. Their focus is 100% on the kids and aren't multi-tasking like we typically do when we're home.

My opinion only - I prefer a center that has 2 teachers and 8 kids in it. The 2 teachers is the key, versus a room with only 1 teacher and 4 babies. If that 1 teacher is having a bad day (and we all do) there's no one there to back him/her up. I toured a place that only took 4 babies and I just wasn't comfortable knowing there wasn't another set of eyes or ears in that classroom.

 

Everywhere around here is 4:1 too. I personally don't like that, but don't have any other choice. With the twins, my MIL lived with us till they were 7 months old and took care of them in our home. with my son, he has to be in daycare so I can work (couldn't deal with the MIL again so soon) but I do go and visit him every day on my lunch hour and nurse him as well.

I think it should be 2:1 personally for infants under 6 months, then MAYBE 4:1 aftr 6 months when they're more mobile and independant. I just hate the thought of a less than 6 month old having to cry from hunger until the other 2 or 3 babies are fed. That happened just yesterday when i went to feed my son. EVERY baby in the room was screaming cuz they were hungry, and the poor teachers were trying to feed AND change diapers. I even offered to give a bottle to one if they put the bouncy seat right next to the chair I was sitting in with my son...... And this room has babies 0-12 months in it. It doesn't happen EVERY day, and we LOVE our daycare, but that doesn't change my opinion about how many teachers to babies there should be. I just think if they are younger than 6 months they need undivided attention and shouldn't be left to cry for more than a couple of minutes.

 

Everywhere around here is 4:1 too. I personally don't like that, but don't have any other choice. With the twins, my MIL lived with us till they were 7 months old and took care of them in our home. with my son, he has to be in daycare so I can work (couldn't deal with the MIL again so soon) but I do go and visit him every day on my lunch hour and nurse him as well.

I think it should be 2:1 personally for infants under 6 months, then MAYBE 4:1 aftr 6 months when they're more mobile and independant. I just hate the thought of a less than 6 month old having to cry from hunger until the other 2 or 3 babies are fed. That happened just yesterday when i went to feed my son. EVERY baby in the room was screaming cuz they were hungry, and the poor teachers were trying to feed AND change diapers. I even offered to give a bottle to one if they put the bouncy seat right next to the chair I was sitting in with my son...... And this room has babies 0-12 months in it. It doesn't happen EVERY day, and we LOVE our daycare, but that doesn't change my opinion about how many teachers to babies there should be. I just think if they are younger than 6 months they need undivided attention and shouldn't be left to cry for more than a couple of minutes.

 

4:1 here in Missouri. Pretty standard everywhere I've looked.

 

QUOTE(blueclouds @ Dec 4 2008, 05:33 PM) [snapback]1097839[/snapback]
I just hate the thought of a less than 6 month old having to cry from hunger until the other 2 or 3 babies are fed. That happened just yesterday when i went to feed my son. EVERY baby in the room was screaming cuz they were hungry, and the poor teachers were trying to feed AND change diapers. I even offered to give a bottle to one if they put the bouncy seat right next to the chair I was sitting in with my son...... And this room has babies 0-12 months in it. It doesn't happen EVERY day, and we LOVE our daycare, but that doesn't change my opinion about how many teachers to babies there should be. I just think if they are younger than 6 months they need undivided attention and shouldn't be left to cry for more than a couple of minutes.

this is pretty much why i'm asking. our boys are fighting their first cold and they've been doing a lot of coughing. it gets a lot worse if they cry but over the past few days they've been improving and they only have coughing fits if they get really worked up. yesterday the daycare called and said jacob had a really bad coughing fit and they felt he was too sick to be there so i needed to take them to the doctor. if the boys weren't sick i needed the doctor to fax them a statement saying they were healthy enough to come back.

we took them to the doctor and the doctor said the same thing he said before, that they have a cold, it's not serious, and they're on the mend. he sent over the note saying they could go back but we kept them home for the rest of the day. not a cough out of either of them. so when i went in this morning i asked them about the circumstances and after some very specific questions i determined that yes, jacob had been crying at the time of the coughing fit. and i know how worked up he has to be right now for the coughing to get bad enough to sound alarming, so he must have really been going. they also said it was around feeding time so now i'm wondering if he was overdue to eat and they were feeding everyone else and he had to sit and cry and wait his turn.

but the thing is, they're a 4:1 facility. i called another facility that's very very nice with an excellent reputation that's at the tippy top of our budget, which is why we didn't choose them when we were looking into daycares initially. and even this expensive place with the fabulous reputation is a 4:1 facility.

so now i'm just frustrated. a nanny would be my first choice but nannies for twins in this market cost an arm and a leg. daycare is only a couple hundred a month less expensive. and i don't think we can find that extra couple hundred in the budget to either switch to a nanny or bump them up to a facility with a lower care worker to child ratio.

 

wow, here in hawaii its 2:1 under 18 months. I think I found the only person on this island willing to take them as it is hard to find someone with 2 openings for infants. I can not believe that some places have a 6:1 ratio. Thats impossible! Personally, I feel 2 infants is a max and don't think even the most super of nannys could handle more (mothers of triplets- I don't know how you can do 3 on your own!).

 

In Massachusetts it's 7:2 ratio for infants. Which goes until I believe 2 years old. So our daycare is really expensive until 2 years. And it can be pretty hard to find spots for twins.

 

Our daycare, which is considered one of the "best" in the area, has a ratio of 1:4 in the infant room. After 12 months it goes up to 1:5.

I also can't imagine how they do it, but for the most part it works OK. Yes there are times when it seems like all the babies are screaming, but there are also times when all of them are happy. And although ideally I wish young babies could always be attended to instantly and not have to cry, it does not seem to have hurt my girls any.

I also decided you can't compare daycare teacher to parents (in terms of how many infants one person can handle). For one thing, having two adults in the room is very different than having only one person. Also, their classroom is perfectly set up for taking care of babies, unlike my house! Everything is close together, just the right size, their supplies are constantly restocked, etc. And they're not trying to do other things like house cleaning, feeding themselves (they do that on breaks), etc. Also, as a PP said, most of them are experienced -- they knew what they were doing way more than I did! And they are much more well-rested than the average parent of infants.

So while they have an incredibly hard job, you can't directly compare it to one woman trying to take care of, say, quadruplets all by herself.

I guess I could have just dittoed what bkpjlp said...

Regarding the crying until he coughed -- it sounds like maybe he does need to stay home another few days. Even if he is not really that sick and it's just a cough, it may not be realistic for the daycare staff to pay extra attention to him so that he doesn't have a coughing fit. That's actually part of our daycare's illness rule -- aside from the question of how sick the child is, if he/she "needs extra attention," the parent is supposed to keep him home because the staff just can't provide that much extra attention.

There are definitely trade-offs to nanny vs. daycare. We love our daycare and are very happy with it, but it's much harder when the kids are sick, as opposed to having a nanny.

 

I am pretty positive that the one my children go to here in VA is 1:3 in the infant room (up to 16 months) and then it goes up 1:4 in the "toddler" room. Then at 2 yrs it changes again, but Im even more uncertain of that number. I want to say 1:8 for 2 yrs old. I know that it changed here like 2 yrs ago. It used to be more children per teacher and they lowered it.

 

Mine go to in-home care. Up until this week they were the only infants. She also has a 2 year old and 18 month old. This week she just took on a 4 month old. While I wasn't exactly excited about it, she totally has it under control and I know how easy my twins are. She has told me there is no way she could take on another child if my twins weren't as easy as they are. I think I've come in twice in 5 months and heard one of the kids crying. And I am there at random times picking them up for appointments.

 

It's 4:1 here in Ohio. I worked in a daycare in the baby room while I was in college, and it was tough somedays with all those babies (12 total) and only 3 teachers. Like pp's said though you could always get a break if you needed one, there were other women in there to help if you were having a hard time, and it was MUCH easier working with the babies knowing that they weren't yours and you didn't have to take them home. Working in the baby room was nothing like staying at home with my 3 kids. Plus everyone who worked in that room loved babies and really enjoyed their job. I personally still think the ratio is to high, but unfortunately if you want a 3:1 or 2:1 ratio you will probably pay alot more.