nursery opening hours

[scottishgal09]

I need to go back to work so will soon be putting my 9 month old in nursery, only thing is that the earliest I can find any nursery open is 7 am to 7 pm. The 7 pm closing time is fine but I really find I need a opening time of 6 pm. I also work Saturday mornings so need something that is open 6 days. Start time should be at least 6:00 pm but I struggle to find this. Do these type of nursery’s exist? What are the opening and closing hours for your nursery’s? Why don’t nursery’s take into account that some parents need to work 6 days 🤨?

Most of the ones I know (cousins, uncle and my neighbours - a married GP couple), use a mix of nurseries/wraparound care at school, wfh and alternate shifts with each other - the neighbours: mum reduced to 3 days a week until they started school; now 4 days plus one weekend shift at local integrated care service. Dad did 4 days, and then moved to 5 days but with WFH 1-1.5 days a week to do admin and telephone consults; he’s now at the surgery most days full time; they use the after school club 3x a week unless an aunt/uncle, who live nearby, pick them up to take them home with cousins.

Ie, they make sure one of them walks their kids to school most days and collects them at 3.30, 2 days a week. They will move to online-only/essential consults if kids sick, and reschedule others or hand over F2F appointments to another colleague. Weekends are busy with football and other activities that both parents volunteer in.

They are typical of all the local professional parents in my area - lawyers, accountants, events & marketing directors, IT specialists, game designers, teachers - male or female. Usually both do a 4 day week when kids young unless there is a grandparent. A handful will get an au pair for a couple of years.

Asking adult children if they think nursery impacted them is hilarious, it’s how the brain develops, how emotional regulation happens and attachments form. How about taking a poll of how many have anxiety, mental health concerns, relationship struggles as that is how you would assess the long term impact of multiple caregivers during infant years

My concern with that would be that they wouldn't have consistent carers at nursery if they are doing 60 hrs a week. I remember my son being very close to his named carer at nursery he was there something like 8.15 to 5.30 4 days a week and she'd be there for most of that time, maybe someone else for the first hour or so, generally he fell asleep in his buggy on the way so he probably didn't even notice when she wasn't there. I don't think it is likely that this little one's named carer will be around for anywhere near 60 hrs a week.

you absolutely need a sick day plan op regardless of your choices as next winter will be a rough one with a baby in nursery and you will need time off. Whilst you have made your choice, the sheer amount of comments on this thread show you it is not the common or usual choice, even for drs nurses etc

I wouldn’t even leave my dog for that long. Why have a child if you don’t plan spending any time with them?

No one on here knows where she lives or what is available to her.

I was mainly referring to the belief, quite often used on this thread, that if you must use full time childcare then it it better to have part of that care performed by a relative, and not fully by a nursery – presumably due to the belief that a relative cares for a child better because they are a relation. I'm am just saying that one consistent setting of childcare is associated with better outcomes than mixing care. What is not determined in that finding is whether the results are due to a consistent carer(s) present, the consistency of the physical setting, consistency of routine etc.

I was taking the p... with the boarding nursery comment.

It's widely recognised that institutionalised care, care homes, boarding schools aren't actually the best for children's development?

Yet that hasn't hindered opinion, has it?

Yes, I know you were. Yet if they were advantageous to exist and made money, they likely would.

A mix. Family support, a nanny, nursery. Same as midwives or nurses, you can get childcare for core hours say 8-5 but outwith that it’s trickier esp if both parents work unsociable hours so my experience is you need some support to make the hours (and not always reliable finishing times) work.

Well it hasn't given her any useful information about a nursery she could use has it.

Well it would be hard to find out I imagine due to different quality of nursery care/family care. You could be using an excellent nursery or a poor one, a relative might love the baby and give excellent or they might be pushed to do it to save the parent money and resent doing it. I bet those things would all have an impact.

With 60 hrs of care it might be a consistent care but it won't be consistent staffing. I wonder what hours the children they studied were doing.

OP clearly didn't know that before she posted or she wouldn't have asked.

Of course those things all have an impact. The value in these large scale studies is that the sample size is large enough whereby differences impact the conclusions less than they might in a small sample size. The children in the study did a mix of hours.

60?

Oh so she imagined we'd know where she lives and what childcare is available in the area. Yes right.

I think some parents who used 5 days a week of nursery at the commonly-available number of hours are taking comments on this thread a bit too personally.

Are you really defending an OP who said that the toys at nursery are more beneficial to a baby than 2 days off a week with one or two parents? And that an under-1 finds home "boring"?

I don't know many who used family childcare a lot at this age, those who do it's usually only one day each week. I think most reactions are because this much childcare is very unusual (hence not offered by nurseries). I don't know anyone who booked 60+ hours of childcare, most tried to do max 4 days/week for little ones. The only people I know who had longer nanny hours (still far below 60) was because the DH is financially available but doesn't engage with childcare (sad, but always the DH).

Much more common in my experience is alternating when the parents work for time alone with the baby.

• A friend and her DH are both shift workers, one NHS. They request rosters for night shifts in different weeks and used a childminder for some core hours when the kids were little.
• Another friend and her DH are both doctors, they jointly schedule night shifts and days as both get some flexibility to tweak their own rosters, still do with the youngest who had 3 days in long day nursery then at 3 moved to 5 shorter 6hr days at school nursery.
• DH and I both could flex, so we also split who did which afternoon pick-ups each week, our DS only had mornings when he was young.

OP, is it really the case that both of you are working the same 60+ hours per week? Or is it that you aren't including your DH in childcare plans? Restaurants are surely great for one of you doing early + day shift and one doing evening, there is a good opportunity to drastically reduce childcare costs and socialise the baby through playgroups instead where you have time to bond.

She wasn't expecting anyone to. She wanted to know if anyone used a nursery at that opening time, thus giving her a lead into whether some nurseries offered it.

Is there a reason why you're displaying such a derogatory attitude to the OP?

The study has followed 6,000 children since 2013 and is ongoing until 2029 in a wide-range of early years settings. The study may contain children on 12 hours a day, 5 days a week – you'd have to look at the raw data from the relevant waves.

Some of the comments have been awful. OP doesn’t deserve to be questioned about why she had a baby, if she wants a baby or if she should send baby to live with family in Thailand.

You don’t have to agree with every single comment by OP to point out how awful some of the comments have been.

60hrs childcare is a lot but equally I've worked 7-7 5 days a week so 60hrs as a nanny

Child was not damaged as just meant had another person To love and play with

Stopping the Saturday am would help

Our nanny also used to work 7-7 for her previous family. They were high level civil service and a solicitor.

I wasn't being derogatory to the OP but to the attitude that people can't expand the topic, it is what normally happens and without being able to tell her if it is possible where she lives what more can you say. What does it matter if my local nursery offers Saturday mornings if none in her city/town do.