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Family

Day Care, Mom’s Vacation, and the Incredible Lightness of America’s Child Rearing Theories

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I was over at Grumpy Rumblings this morning, where I came across nicoleandmaggie’s latest Deliberately Controversial Post. They ask if it’s right (or not) to keep on dropping your kids at day care when you’re on vacation, at one point citing the example of a child who realizes what’s up and is unhappy because he doesn’t get a vacation from the institution where he’s being warehoused.

Naturally this elicits a great string of commentary, much of it pretty entertaining and much of it pretty interesting. Several women remarked that since they’re paying for day care five days a week, they’re most certainly going to use it. Others snorted at the idea that the brats will be scarred for life if they’re left in a day care center for a few more days, willy-nilly.

Grumpy Rumblings has that WordPress comment function that forces you to sign in to enter a comment. I don’t wish to comment as English 235 PVCC, but I would like to add a little rant to the conversation. As follows:

Well. You are paying for it. Good reason to make your kid miserable, hm?

Seriously, IMHO it depends on your child and her attitude toward being institutionalized five days a week. Some kids love it. Some don’t. My son was utterly miserable and sick all the time in what was said to be the best day care center in the city. Fortunately for him, I happened to walk in the door just as he was climbing onto a makeshift table cobbled together by balancing an old door across the backs of two plastic kiddie chairs — he and the door tumbled down on top of a little girl before I could reach him. We left and never returned; I took him back to his old sitters in the neighborhood, which cost more but was sure as He!! worth it. He soon threw off the chronic infections he’d had since I enrolled him in the place, and his whole attitude changed. For the better.

And yes, when I was not physically at work, I did leave him with those women, each of whom watched two to four kids in her home — it allowed me to get a lot done and to unwind from the demanding and sometimes unpleasant job of mothering as well as from my paid work.

IMHO we too often fail to put ourselves in our children’s shoes; videlicet the idea [alluded to in nicoleandmaggie’s post] that you should tell kids how they’re feeling. How would you like some patronizing fool to tell you what’s going on in your head? Similarly, how would you like to be locked up in a day-care center, coming home sick with every bug in circulation, so that you’re literally never feeling well? If your child isn’t bothered by this, by all means leave the kid there when you’re on vacation — you work hard and you do deserve a break. But if she is bothered by it, maybe she’s trying to tell you something.

But then…we often fail to put ourselves in anyone else’s shoes, eh? It’s part of the human condition.

What do you think of this conundrum? Go on over to Grumpy Rumblings and add to the fray! 🙂

Kids & Costs: Another point of view

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Guest Post by Frugal Scholar

Since I took issue with Funny’s** premise—that having children is intrinsically and unavoidably expensive—and since I promised to write something for her, here is a short version of what I would say to prospective parents.  First of all, I’ve read Elizabeth Warren’s books and articles. She is truly a voice for the American middle-class. I love her. In one of her books, The Two-Income Trap,  she avers that American middle class folks are in a bind: they MUST buy houses in neighborhoods with good school districts. These houses are pricy and come with high property taxes. Hence, both parents must work. Hence if one parent loses his or her job: disaster! This book, by the way, was written before the bursting of the housing bubble, or, as Funny (or I) would put it, the Bush Economy. [uh-oh! Evan, hang onto your hat! 😉)

When I read Warren’s book, a library copy as befits a frugal type like myself, I found myself saying NO. It doesn’t have to be that way. I feel there is always a choice.

Before I moved into the pricey neighborhood, I would check out the schooling in less desirable areas. Often, the schools are better than one would think. Or there are enrichment programs. I am skeptical of school rankings, incidentally, since they seem to correlate with the wealth and education of the parents. So that is what you get in the “better” school districts.

If the schools are really unacceptable, I would consider homeschooling. Why not? The money you save by living in a cheaper house could obviate the need for one parent to work. I would hate to do this myself, but there are many passionate homeschoolers.

If you decide you MUST live in the great neighborhood, why not rent an apartment or buy a too-small house? As anyone with kids in college knows, the years fly by. A little discomfort in the service of a greater good is a fine lesson to be teaching your children.

As a person who is hardwired for frugality, I run through similar processes for almost every decision I make, from the trivial (which tomato sauce?) to the momentous (which college?). As a general rule, I run a value-test on everything: with two choices, test the cheaper one first. That is why my son did soccer locally and didn’t go for the expensive and time-consuming traveling team. Why? He wasn’t that interested or good. That is why my daughter took a very basic ballet class at the local YMCA rather than at the upscale studio. Why? Ditto. Yet when it came to the summer, we opted for an expensive sleep away camp for both. Why? Because as members of a minority religion, we felt it was important for the children to get a sense of their culture.

I hardly need to say that other families will make different decisions, owing to the different talents and interests of the kids. I also happen to believe that most children are over-scheduled these days. That belief fits into my  general laziness.

My happy memories are of trips to the Children’s Museum, Aquarium, and Audubon Zoo—we were members of all and went a lot. Doing art together (I splurged on top-quality materials). Cooking together. Taking walks. Reading. Going to FREE concerts. We spent a lot on trips to faraway grandparents. And, through the years, I kept waiting for my children to get expensive.

**OOPS—just noticed that the post to which I took issue is a GUEST POST. I don’t know what Funny thinks.

(LOL! Funny thinks kids cost even more than pets. And that’s a lot!)

Don’t miss these great posts from Frugal Scholar:

Paula Begoun’s Skincare Recommendations: Anti-aging et al
Kitchen Remodel on a Budget: Beginnings
The Parental Safety Net

Chilly Christmas Night

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Temperatures are supposed to drop into the 20s tonight, after a cold and blustery day. Plants are covered, as best as they can be covered while the wind fights to carry the old sheets and drapes to California. The big old-fashioned environmentally obtuse Christmas lights festooning the lime tree are turned on, in hopes of sparing the tree’s canopy this winter. And under the bedcovers, the heating pad is tucked where my feet go and turned to Day-Glo Blast.

Indoors, though, it was a nice warm Christmas. M’hijito was thrilled with the KitchenAid stand mixer and not bothered at all that it had gathered dust in my hall closet for several years. So I felt good to have found something to share with him that pleased him so much . . . and decluttered my life handsomely, too.

M’hijito was also pleased to announce he has succeeded in paying off all the credit card debt that accrued between the time he started his Arizona job (at much less than he earned in San Francisco) and his latest raise, which puts him back in the middle class. He now intends to snowflake down the remaining credit union loan that covered his costs during the year of unemployment after the dot-com bubble burst. Since he’s been paying that down steadily anyway, he should soon be debt-free (mortgage excepted). My son, the chip off the old frugal block!

Meanwhile, unless something’s totally awry, it looks like my scheme to deal with biweekly pay by setting up a weekly spending budget is working. Just paid the AMEX bill and found $399 left in the credit-card piggy bank, plus around $150 in the account devoted to recurring monthly bills.

Hot diggety! This means I’ll have a couple hundred bucks to spend on some decent office clothes at the sales tomorrow and still have two or three hundred dollah to apply to the Renovation Loan principal. Dance to spring!

Tomorrow: How to pay monthly bills on biweekly pay.