Hellobee Boards

We don’t have any announced dates when daycare will reopen. Currently we’re closed through the end of May at the earliest. But my oldest who was in school will be home through June 21 at the earliest and I’m not sure what the plans will be for summer camps. Right now my plan is to keep them both home as long as one has to be home. I do like that it gives us a natural buffer to see what happens if things do reopen in early June. But practically speaking if one kid has to be home it just makes the most sense to keep them both home.

We are thinking around June 1? Daycare is opening in May but my oldest is home doing school anywyas

We are working from home, so we will keep them home. Schools here (NY) are closed for the remainder of the school year so I feel like the day cares that are not open will remain closed. Our county is still in bad shape in terms of increasing rates of hospitalization so I wouldn't feel comfortable either.

I'm not really sure what will happen this summer. I'm confident that our daycare will open but I'm concerned about the day camp we had lined up through the park district for DS1. They just canceled the sports through the park district but have kept mum on the summer camps. We're not supposed to open until June so I'm sure they're just waiting for guidance from the state. If they close the camp, then we have to get a summer nanny and then we'll pull DS2 from daycare. Which sucks b/c that was something he was looking to go back to before kindergarten. All in all, it's not a great situation. Even having a summer nanny isn't going to be great b/c what's going to be open this summer? But DH and I are still working FT and we can't sustain this lifestyle until school starts up again, when that happens. So yes, we would send them when they open. I've been in contact with the daycare and know that they're taking great precautions. I get that I can't control what other families are doing but I'm half convinced I've already had Covid earlier this year.

Daycares around here are open but my kids have been home with me for 8+ weeks because I’m on maternity leave. My leave ends on 5/11 and I’ll be working from home at that point. I’m struggling with what to do. I have a newborn and a 4.5 year old and my husband is an essential worker who won’t be home 3 days a week. There is no way I can get work done on those days if I am with my kids alone. Absolutely no way. And I know I will have a lot of work right away and not a lot of flexibility from my boss. So, I had been planning to send them back for those 3 days. But, after reading everyone’s replies, I’m now feeling guilty and second guessing that. Hospitalization rates are stable around here but still not great (~100 people hospitalized currently in my county). Of course I don’t want my kids, especially my newborn, to get sick. But I feel like, even if I keep them home now and send them back in a month - the virus will still be circulating in our community and they’ll just be exposed then. This isn’t going away - we will be exposed to some degree for the next 12-18 months or more. It just isn’t sustainable or realistic for me NOT to work during that time. Ugh, I don’t know what to do.

@Cait1: Please don't feel guilty! Every family choice looks different. You have to do what you have to do and I am sure the daycare is taking every measure they can to ensure a clean, healthy, safe environment.

We're past daycare but I'm having this very debate with myself about summer camp, if they open. I'm not comfortable sending my daughter, and if they do open, we'd lose hundreds of dollars in non-refundable deposits, and I want to send her because working full time and parenting full time is the pits and I imagine it'll only get worse in the summer, but I'm really nervous about this virus and how little we know.

Our state is one that's doing lots reopening starting today and in the next 2 weeks. However, our daycare has said the earliest they will open is June 8. I am very skeptical about the sweeping re-opening orders, but if I'm proven wrong and things are looking great I'll send her to school since we will have had about a month of everything being open to evaluate.

Ours is looking to start a phased reopening on May 19. They’re asking if you can stay home to do so, but want to provide and option for those that need to work. We filled out a survey for this summer saying we’d want to go, but would willing to let someone in more need take it, knowing they won’t be running it at full capacity. We’ll see how it actually plays out though.

Our preschool has been open this whole time. Daycares/preschools were deemed essential in Washington state. They are taking the kids temps 3 times a day, the teachers get the students from and to their cars and have a very strict and thorough cleaning and hand washing protocol. We will probably send our 4.5 yo back soonish.

Our governor has extended the order for daycares to stay closed through the end of June. I haven't thought about it too much yet, my guess sadly is that by then it will be evident that things have gone badly in some places that reopened, and so the daycare probably won't reopen anyways. I feel like if we send the kids back to daycare we will get covid sooner or later, given how crazy contagious it is, so I'd really like to see some treatments - or just changes in treatment protocols - that make severe and deadly outcomes less likely than they are currently for people with our demographics.

Totally exhausted working from home with two very young kids, but our suburb has around 20,000 people and nearly 100 deaths already. All the surrounding communities have ordinances requiring everyone (in some cases, all kids 2 and older) to wear masks when outside their homes. Really hard to imagine life going back to anything that remotely resembles normal anytime in the near future...

I’m in New Zealand and we’ve just moved to “level three” which means that school and ECE centres (daycares etc) are now open but only for children of essential workers and as a last resort. To provide some context my daughter’s school has approx 380 pupils but only seven are attending school while we’re at level three.

I’m also in Washington state where daycare are essential. We sent our son (3) back three days a week because my husband is required back in work three days per week and I work for the schools which are running remotely. I see kids via zoom and couldn’t handle only working afternoon’s through evenings anymore. I was missing dinner and bedtime and struggling mentally. The shift just for three days made a huge impact for both my husband and I. We’re self isolating from my parents and family that have all been quarantined from others, as much as I love family I had to do this for myself.

p.s. they say de-densification will be an essential part of childcare over the next 18 months - and the state licensing body will provide guidelines soon - but I wonder how much that really does anything. When little kids stick everything in their mouth, aren't going to wear masks, and there's no way you can keep them apart. Like, it feels more like security theatre for daycare, than something that will keep everyone safer. I feel like all it will do is make it more expensive/less available...

@periwinklebee: yes security theater. As a daycare teacher I can say, all the changes our administration says they will implement, while I agree that they may mitigate some risk, they aren't going to be enough. It's going to be super risky still. And all these changes will also be lowering the standard of care in many ways. It feels like a lose/lose.

@MamaCate: So we have pretty similar policies in place. And I agree that it dramatically lowers the number of kids that are in contact with each other which is great. It also dramatically increases the amount of time that children are spending in one room together which is a bad idea. Our outside time has also been cut by a lot in order to prevent any overlap. which means more time all in the same room breathing the same air together. And going from two teachers per room to one is going to have an absolutely gigantic impact on quality of care. My students are younger than Pre-K age. There's absolutely no way to keep them from breathing on each other or to keep every toy sanitized at every second. Especially with only one adult. I'm not saying that there's necessarily a better way to do it. I just think it's going to be a nightmare. It's also increasing the trauma because instead of at least going back to the classrooms they were accustomed to, children will be split into different groups possibly with new teachers and with completely different routines. It's going to be really hard.

@MamaCate: I'm sure it depends on the details of how you do it, and how old the kids are, but I think for small kids it is more or less a losing battle if you have an area with high number of cases. One proposal is to have half the kids come M/W/F and the other half Tu/Th. But if you still have the same teachers there everyday (they need full-time jobs to pay their bills), then they are going to be vectors of transmission if someone gets sick. And parents will use other forms of childcare on days where their kids can't come to the center, which has a counteracting effect of increasing the number of people they come into contact with who might be infected. It is not feasible to remodel the building to make classrooms smaller. In our center there's been no talk of reducing prices for the likely reduced availability of care - they are struggling financially already from shutdowns - and I also think it's going to be really hard for families to justify or afford the costs for reduced care. My kids are also young, and there's just no way you will keep them apart or stop them from sticking things in their mouth. Some of the social distancing stuff I think could work better for school age kids, where you can enforce that they wear masks and stay apart.

The frustrating thing is that we don't yet have much information about viral loads and shedding in kids. We know small kids tend not to get very sick (with some tragic but relatively rare exceptions). If this is associated with them not shedding much virus, then keeping schools and daycares closed may not be doing much of anything to slow community transmission. Or it could be completely critical if they are central vectors... I feel horrible for everyone involved given what a mess it is, especially teachers...

@ALV91711: This is PreK not daycare but they obviously closed for the rest of the school year. They have “camp” all summer and haven’t announced yet if that’s going forward or not but I can’t imagine we will send him. At this point I’d be thrilled to get him back in August for next year!!!!!

When ours reopen, all children two and over will have to wear masks the full day. There is a state ordinance going into effect this week that requires everyone 2 and over to wear masks anywhere outside their home where they cannot maintain at least 6 feet of social distance.

I completely understand the rationale for masks and agree that masks are our best defense when social distancing isn't possible, but there's something about the thought of my toddler needing a mask all day at daycare that makes it all the harder to consider sending him back. And then there's my infant, who's too young to wear a mask and will stick everything in her mouth no matter what. Anyone else facing a similar regulation?