- We love your children. As much as a teacher may come to care for a child she has in her class, she usually only has that child for a part of a year and then they move on to another. We have your child for years, many from infancy through school age. We love them as if they were our own and cry just as much when they move on as you may.
- We’ve often made the decision to run a home daycare to have more time with our own child. It turns into so much more than that when we attach to yours. It isn’t just a job to us.
- There are many advantages to having a home daycare. We’re home when our child arrives after school. We’re able to care for them when they’re ill, even if we have to keep them separated from the other children.
- On the other hand, we aren’t able to take a day off on a whim. If we did, it would put too many people out so we avoid it when at all possible. This means we aren’t able to join our child on a field trip or go have Thanksgiving dinner with them at school. We can’t become room  mothers and often have to find someone else to take them to after school activities. We’ve chosen to make this sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel a twinge of pain when we see pictures of everyone else happily sitting in the cafeteria surrounded by their children and their paper Indian hats or off at the petting area of the farm.
- Our love for your children makes it more difficult for us to enforce payment agreements. We’ve heard all the reasons why we can’t be paid that week. Going through a divorce, had to pay the electric bill, or simply that someone ‘forgot’. This one hurts us the most. All it takes is one or two people to skip a payment and our budget is thrown into a tail spin. For anyone who’s ever paid an electric bill late or had it cut off, you know there are fees tacked on top of the bill. Those add up. We love your children so we aren’t likely to refuse them just because their fee hasn’t been paid, even if we haven’t been able to go grocery shopping to get the food we need to feed your children for the week.
I often wonder… How long would you work at your job if your boss forgot to pay you? How important is it for you that your paycheck arrive in full on the day you’ve agreed on? Imagine your boss coming in and handing you a partial paycheck one week, because that’s all he had, then skipping it the next week completely. Would you stay? We tend to because we love your child, but it doesn’t make it any easier on us than it would if you were in the same situation. Apologies don’t pay bills, however sincere they may be, if they come at all.
Crazy Cohorts 