Child Care - When Is It Too Much? - Part II
In this second of a two part series we're going to discuss what
can be done to balance between child care and giving your child
the attention he deserves.
To balance out the care your child gets between the child care
center and yourself, assuming that both parents have to work or
in the case of a single parent, there are several things that
can be done.
This isn't always easy, but try to work out a flexible work
schedule with your boss. If both parents work a day job maybe
you can arrange to have one of the parents working either at
night or a staggered shift, say starting at noon and working to
8 or 9. This way one parent will be home with the child most of
the morning and the other parent can be home with the child all
evening, leaving only a few hours each day that the child is
actually in the care of a day center. This may not seem like
much but every hour is something.
Another thing a parent can do is see if it is possible to take
the child to work with him or her for at least a couple of days
a week. Some work places actually have daycare facilities
inside. While it is true that the parent will be spending most
of the time working and not with the child, there is still the
ride to work, lunch and break times and the ride home that they
can spend together. Just this little bit of time to break up the
day can make a big difference in your child's disposition,
especially if he is old enough to look at the clock on the wall
and know that in a short time mommy or daddy are going to be
picking him up for a nice lunch together.
If neither of those are an option then there is another
alternative that is actually becoming very popular especially
among mothers. That option is to become a Work At Home Mom or
what is commonly referred to as a WAHM. A work at home mom is
just what it sounds like, a mother that does her work out of the
house. Today, with the advent of the computer, this is easy to
do. There are many legitimate opportunities a mother can find on
the Internet that can pay her for the work she does at home,
from stuffing envelopes to typing ads. Of course she has to
carefully check out each opportunity before getting involved, as
there are many scams out there, but once she finds something
with a good reputation, usually a company that is a member of
the BBBOnline, she should be able to make a decent enough income
to justify her staying at home. It may not be as much as what
she would make in an office but when you factor in that there
are no transportation costs, no lunches to pack, etc., the
income may be more than enough to get the family over the hump.
The bottom line is this. We don't have children to dump them in
a daycare center. Children need their parents. There are ways to
make that happen. It just takes a little effort and a little
compromise.