To ask about nursery or childminder

[Shiningdew]

I am looking round some next week and thought I'd throw it out there tonight - which do you use and why? :)

It's probably not very rational but I am worried about them going to a childminder where just one adult is in the house and could be doing anything and DCs are young enough not to talk.

Just depends on the place and person
I chose nursery as they are always open and no sickness
Have seen good( and bad both: nannies on smartphones all the time; chaos at nurseries) - you just need to find the person or place that you feel most comfortable.

I went with nursery because of the guarantee that someone would be there - no sick days. Our nursery was the least convenient for us, but the best for DS (lovely, caring, amazing, couldn't praise them enough).

However, we now live in a small community and the childminders are great because they take the kids to all the village events, plus school pickup etc., which is brilliant for getting children used to school routines, daily life.

I think it's is all down to finding out what suits you and your child the best.
Be it a childminder or a nursery you and they have to be on the same wavelength, and have good two way communication channels open.
Most of the childminders I know are very knowledgeable, and passionate about working with children, and all are more than qualified to do their job.

The only childminder nearby which is a fit has a dog so we'll be picking one of three nurseries. A friend's kid goes to one of them and she only had good things to say. Hopefully it'll be OK!

It is hard Fluffy. I have been fortunate to be able to be at home but I know some friends with wonderful child minders. Personal reference is reassuring. Failing that, ofsted and asking for references from previous/existing families is a good idea.

I know its a worry shiningdew, our phantasies can have us fearing all sorts. But at the risk of sounding glib, nursery workers have been guilty of the abuse of children in their care. The truth is there is good and bad everywhere. It's about doing your research and finding what is right for you and your family.

I know. It's not serious abuse I worry about, but being harsh/draconian with the DDs, ignoring them - that sort of stuff.

Do you know anybody locally who uses childminders and can recommend the good ones (and more importantly, knows which ones to avoid? With my 2nd childminder she seemed fine when we first met her but I wouldn't recommend anybody to leave their child with her for even an hour. I thought I was a good judge of character but clearly not!
Now I know lots of good childminders in this area but I didn't know when I needed to choose them.

shining what do you think they would be doing? A childminder is in a position of trust and in a vulnerable position simply because they work alone, but they are still answerable to Ofsted the same as nurseries and nursery staff.

I know queen but just as I can put together a show for ofsted so could a childminder :) it would be easy for one to ignore/not engage/shout at a toddler - note I said easy to not they do!

My dd started going to a childminder at 8 months, I'd much prefer to be a sahm until she goes to school but I need my wage so I wanted the second best option which for me is to be in a home environment.
She's now 2.5 and loves it there, she gets loads of individual attention, flexible schedule, they go out most days even if it's just to the shop or local garden centre, she can sleep when she wants to and most importantly comes home happy, clean, well fed and chatty.
It's also affordable at £4 per hour.

I did look into 4 separate nurseries and found the chaos and noise level was off the scale, there wasn't any chance of her having a nap and even though it was a 1:4 ratio there were many times the kids were all mixed into one group and it seemed to be a constant stream of one or the other getting hurt or crying over some sort of dispute and I felt she was way too young to be so independent and having to deal with that environment.

I do think they eventually need some sort of structure before school so next year when she's 3.5 she will attend nursery in the mornings for one year.

Mine are beyond that stage now but we always used a nanny/nursery combo, great one on one with their nanny, then socializing at nursery.

shining it's just as easy for a nursery to put on a show too.
But if it's just one childminder, Ofsted will be with them for 3-5 hours, if the minder was draconian and shouted at/ignored them, then I would hope a decent inspector should be able to pick up on this, because the children will not be used to it, and the rapport with the children will not be there. The adult could fake it but the young children can't.

I know this is unreasonable of me, because there's plenty of very good nannies and childminders out there, but I didn't want to choose a nanny or childminder for my DC because of bad childhood experiences with a nanny I had.
I figured that even if one of the nursery workers didn't like DC, then there'd be the other workers to act as a safeguard, which you wouldn't get with a bad nanny.

Plus nurseries are more reliable in terms of still being open if a member of staff is ill or on holiday. The nursery we use is great, there's low staff turnover and the DC bonded well with key workers.

Nursery for me any day.

Don't get it when people say I chose a childminder for 1-1 care! Very few childminders just have 1 child so it's not 1-1 care. It's 1-3 1-4 1-8 even!

I see lots of child minders near me who meet for coffee with the minded children who are Sat in pram whilst they chat. Or Sat in groups taking at story time at the sure start and babies just sat on the floor with no adult interaction.

At least in a nursery there is fun activities all day.

I am a childminder. I am flexible, never sick (I've only had to close a few days over the past 10 years), love 'my' children, have lots of fun, grow our own vegetables, cook real food - including vegetarian, do normal daily stuff and all the Ofsted required teaching stuff. For the past 3 years I have done 1-1 until 3pm when we collected older children from school. 'My' children are attached to me but never more than they are to their parents.

And I am certainly not unusual.

We use a childminder - I felt more comfortable sending dc to a home environment as they were under 1 when I went back to work. The bond with the childminder is a good thing - I'm still mum and number 1, but dc is happy and loved while I'm at work.

We have used both

Childminder 1 year
Nursery for last year

I much prefer the nursery setting due to being far more reliable and fair.

We only pay for the hours we need whereas our childminder had set hours to pay for whether you used them or not.
Also the holiday thing used to be quite hard to coordinate, as we couldn't always get the same hol dates from our workplace as the CMs hols.( neither did we want to take those dates but had no choice)

Had to take unpaid leave off work when child minder was ill too.

We have had none of these issues with nursery and the kids love it and skip in without saying goodbye!
I think the mixing with other groups of children / set activities is good prep for school.

I wish we used nursery from the beginning

We use both! Nursery for dd who is now 3, she started 2 days a week from 11 months and loved it. There were occasions when I picked her up and felt as if she wasn't really getting much from it but think that was more to do with particular staff members. She's at more of a preschool now 7.30-6 and loves it.
Ds is 16 months and we felt a childminder was better for him, he's more of a home bird, snuggly and we felt he needed a closer bond with fewer people.

DS goes to nursery 2 and a half days a week whilst I go to college .
Nursery is on campus so he's only 5 minutes away.
He absolutely loves it!
He has a key worker and there is 1 carer for 2 children . They do fun activities like baking, painting , story time etc
There's a huge garden with a slide and swings and a vegetable patch and green house where they grown their own food .
All meals are organic and they have snacks of fruit and veg.
They send home little cards with what they've done and ate all day and also send pictures through an app called parent zone .
I love DS nursery and so does he he didnt want to come home the other day !

Depends so much on the age of the child, the hours they're going to be there, and why you're sending them.

We chose a nursery for DD to do her 15 free hours, and sent her for a couple of months beforehand to do a couple of sessions a week because we thought she could do with it. Before that, she had always been cared for within the family. I like that CMs provide a family style environment, and there are some near us who offer the free hours, but that's not why we wanted the provision. She spends the rest of the time in a family environment after all. We also wanted her to get used to being with lots of other children the same age. However, if I were looking for childcare for a baby, the family style environment would be more important than socialisation. Particularly if they would be there a lot. Facilities tend to matter more the older a child gets too.

There's also the finances. On the one hand, CMs are usually cheaper. OTOH, nurseries in my experience are more likely to be set up to accept the vouchers.

I chose a nursery with low staff turnover. It meant the dc's had 2 key workers and knew the rest of the staff. I trusted a group of adults more than a solo childminder.

Cm until ds got his free nursery hours and then a cm/ nursery combination (same cm). Our cm is great and we even chose ds's primary school so he could stay with her. We chose her because she looked after DH's now teenage daughters when they were little. She does amazing things with him - lots of outdoor activities, lots of fun learning, making things, doing things etc - she doesn't just stick the kids in front of the tv. It's totally a labour of love for her too as she doesn't even charge as much as others. She's like Mary Poppins! Couldn't be happier with how we've approached it. We felt that more one to one contact with just one other carer was important when ds was a baby. We also liked the home environment which was much calmer than a nursery. As he got older he really benefited from the additional stimulation provided by nursery and is now 100% ready for school!

I used a childminder up to 3 years old. In fact she retired and that is why we switched to nursery. It was a really family set up, her husband was semi-retired so around a lot and in face they were both registered. Husband played the guitar and sang with the toddlers, her son (over 20) played football with them in the garden. She had been a childminder since her son was born and she didn't want to return to work as a social worker.

She was lovely, but I think it was an unusually idyllic set up. ds was v difficult to potty train. I'd send in five outfits for the day and she would normally use them and send them home clean and tumble dried. Obviously this was not meant to be part of the service but she always "had the wash on". This on its own saved my sanity when I had a small baby at home too.

I think, thinking about it that it will have to be a nursery as I've absolutely no back up in the event of illness or holiday so nursery it is! 20 month old and 5 month old - would they be allowed to be together?