who is minding the children?Childcare?Maid?Inlaws?

Every parent has to find a caretaker. We face the same dilemma few years back.

1)Maid - no way. Too many horror stories.
2) Parents and InLaws-they want to enjoy their afternoon teas/ Taiji, rather than change nappies..
3) Childcare Agencies- All our kids started from 2 months except for Wei, 5 months plus.

Why do we place our kids in childcare?
4. for Wei, we did not have an option. So chuck him into an Infant school.
Initially it was tough for me and wifey to leave him "alone".
- How will our baby survive?
- Can we trust the teachers to dote on our little darlings?

5. Seeing how Wei adapted in school, it gives us confidence to drop Kang/Yi into early Infant care :)

Advantage of Childcare
- kids more sociable and likely more independent, eat/sleep/bath/toiletTrain themselves
- adapt faster to new environment
- knows how to Share, Cooperate and live in a community
- set the foundation to prepare kiddos for primary schools

Negative points of Childcare
- contagious disease (HFMD, ChickenPox, flu, infection). Sure to raise every parent's anxiety :p
- school teachers are poached regularly. Impact is worse for smaller schools, as they do not have "standby" staffs. Children can be traumatised by new faces every so often.

Point Of View (if parents are interested to go the childcare path)
- manage our own expectations. We started with high expectations, but got a lot of disappointments. I am not saying Parents should settle for less, but reality today is we have to pay higher premium to get top-notch services.

- child development is shared responsibility between parents /teachers/management.But we do encounter a lot of parents who "delegate" teachers for everything.

Sadly, our childcare industry is still working in an environment whereby profitability/bottomline, has higher weightage over passion :)
** will this change as the society becomes more affluent?
* we do hope MCYS' vision to overhaul childcare industry (bring in more teachers, raise service standards) will have a positive impact on the industry

- Babybonus is a great help for parents, and the money can be used for school curriculum, medication etc. It certainly makes our baby-making decision easier :)

Taking of care of a kid is never easy, we shall face the challenge together and take it one step at a time :)


Edited 04Oct2009
If you should wish to hire a maid, this website alerts you to potential pitfalls
-->http://singaporemaid.blogspot.com/2009/08/about-my-maids.html