I have tried all kinds of childcare. When my daughter was born, I knew I couldn't trust my infant to a stranger.
My best friend wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and offered to watch her for me at a really low rate. For a new mom strapped for money and scared of daycare, it was a dream come true. The problem was, my friend's idea of watching my child and mine were very different.
She wanted to shop all day, meet her friends for lunch, and had a reason at least once a week why she couldn't watch my daughter. When she called me at work to tell me she was meeting a friend at Walmart and would bring my daughter home to me, I didn't know the Walmart was two hours away or that my child wouldn't be returned until nine o'clock that night. I was panicked. Needless to say the friendship ended when the daycare agreement did.
My husband had a friend at work who's wife wanted to start a childcare. She was willing to start watching my daughter for the same price I was paying, and she would get a reference to get her business off the ground.
She definitely wasn't the childcare type, and favored her own child, even to the extent of letting the child, who was two years older than my one-year-old, hit, bite, and take toys away. When she realized she couldn't handle childcare, and unknown to me, she took a third shift job in a fast food restaurant. During the day, she would call me and tell me my daughter was throwing fits and banging her head into the floor, and that there was something mentally wrong with her.
I left work mid-morning one day to do a surprise visit and found out what the problem was. This woman was gating my daughter in a bedroom by herself all day while she slept to recover from her night shift job. Obviously she thought caring for my child was easy extra money.
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