Staying at Home with Your Children Vs. Child Care

There are a lot of pros and cons of staying at home with your children. It takes a lot of work and patience to be a stay at home parent. I think it takes the right person to be able to do it. If you can, I think it's better. But you will be with them day and night, where if you have your children in child care you actually get the opportunity to be alone and away from them. You do need your own personal time even if you stay at home with them or you do put them in a day care. No matter how much you love them every parent needs this.

Child care can be very costly. There are a lot of middle class families who find it hard to make ends meet if they put their child into day care. Yes, you do get a deduction on your taxes from child care, but is it worth it? The average cost of daycare for one child is between $150- $200 a week, which adds up to a lot of money at the end of the year.

Do you really know who is watching your child at daycare? Can this person handle the amount of kids that is given to them that day? What kinds of things are they learning at day care that I cannot teach my child myself? These are all kinds of questions you need to ask yourself when deciding to put your child in day care. There is a lot of great day cares out there, and then there is some that are not. One recommendation I would recommend is that you do thorough investigations of several day cares before you make your decision.

There are some cons to staying home with your children besides the fact that you are with them all the time. They do not get the interaction with other children when they stay at home with you. My recommendation is to get out and find some other mothers in your neighborhood and have a play date with your kids. They need to be around other children so that they can learn to play nicely and to share. It is also a good idea because you can child swap so you can watch their kid while they get alone time and vice versa.