Find Good Daycare For Your Kids, Eh?
I confess that at times home-schooling starts to wear on my very last nerve and I long for a place my son and I could both feel good about. It’s been years since I’ve even looked at daycare, though, and much of that is due to the bad memories I have of the few places I did check out.
There is nothing — nothing — worse than walking into a daycare with your child in your arms and smelling the reek of dirty diapers, hearing the clamor of unhappy children and seeing tables, toys and floors streaked with graham cracker crumbs hardening in a pool of spilled juice. Unless, perhaps, it’s experiencing all of that and knowing that this is, indeed, the very same place that once looked so clean, calm and inviting before you began shelling out hundreds of dollars each month and leaving your child in their care.
Yeah, I’m a bit jaded about daycare. Then again, I never knew how to go about finding a good childcare center or nanny beyond opening up the phone book.
Parents in Canada at least have a bit more information about locating a good daycare thanks to a free site that serves as a virtual meeting place, helping parents and childcare providers connect quickly. With unique search features that allow parents to look for daycare in their zipcode, then select providers based on their child’s age and their budget, the site helps parents save on gas while looking for the best environment for their kid.
But it doesn’t stop there: registered users of can post reviews of various sitters, nannies and childcare facilities, which means parents can help spare each other from bad experiences while applauding those places and people who deserve the acclaim.
If you’re a parent in Canada, check them out at DaycareBear.ca.
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Canada does pay more in taxes, especially in a province like Quebec. My kids live there with their mother (we have week-to-week custody) and I live in Ontario, right near the border. The upshot is my youngest goes to daycare on the Quebec side. Quebec has a unique system for daycare..we pay $7 per day, the rest is subsidized. As well, each daycare in an area, including homes, are regularly inspected (no notice, people just show up) by a district office (which is also a daycare center…not just some administrative office). If something is amiss, the daycare is closed and the problem fixed…for instance, my son’s daycare had an outbreak of a particular kind of virus. The daycare was closed, inspected, cleaned/disinfected, and the air checked. Since it happened on a Friday, the kids were back that Monday. Efficient system and it’s run, not by some moronic bureaucracy, but by caregivers.
It is hard for working parents to find a trustworthy daycare! Most reputable places welcome an impromtu visit of prospective clients; that’s how I found a good one. The problem is, the good ones are also expensive!! Just goes to show, you get what you pay for, usually.
There is also a .com of the same domain and information
And Quebec and BC are our highest taxed provinces.
Yes, Quebec is a higher-taxed province…but you know, after having lived there and back in Ontario, I can safely say that it is cheaper to live in Quebec. I can buy a 2400 square foot home, with a loft and a large lot for about $220,000. Contrast that with the same size home in Vancouver (what, $600,000?) or even Ottawa ($300,000) Yikes. So, the money you spend on higher taxes, you more than make up for in decreased child care costs, and a much smaller mortgage.