Scarlett as a parent I understand your dilema with kids. People seem to think you can just drop your kids at any daycare, that they are all the same and it is a matter of price shopping. We had our kids at the JCC for a few years and it was top notch. However it was an inconvenient drive for us so we have them closer to our home. Tolerable place, not as great as the JCC but not as bad as a Kindercare. Decent teacher/child ratio… tolerable. We fork out 300 a week for two kids and that is only 3 days a week.
We would not even think of bringing in a live in nanny or someone who is not related. In fact I know of people who have even had family members steal from them.
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Montessori is good but you will find a pretty high variance of quality between locations. We did for the ones that we checked out. Also the normal operation hours for Montessori were no convenient for us and as you know these places make a killing on after hours care.
