The age-old debate in Facebook and Reddit mother and parenting groups continues: which is better: daycare or nanny? In general, I’m happy we had a nanny until Kaia was at least 12 months. if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have stopped our nanny relationship once we went to Australia in December and started Kaia in daycare in January when we came back. That was the point when not only did our nanny start taking us for granted and let go of a lot of her known responsibilities, but also when I felt like she just wasn’t keeping up with ensuring Kaia was doing age-appropriate, developmental activities. If there is one thing I absolutely do not miss, it’s having to manage a household employee and her constant insolence; it’s a far bigger burden than I ever previously had imagined.

While daycare certainly has its own set of challenges, it’s been nice that whenever I’ve had feedback, I can deliver it to the teachers directly and to the administration, and therefore there is always accountability (this certainly was NOT the case with our nanny). We’ve seen a lot of change since we’ve given feedback at our chosen daycare. But daycare isn’t necessarily always stable, either: our center director quit due to mental health challenges about two weeks ago. It was completely sudden and out of the blue. We really liked her and found her to be really responsive and empathetic. There have been rumors of witchcraft (if you can believe it or not…) amongst the teachers at the school. And just today, the main teacher (there’s a head teacher and an assistant teacher in each classroom) of Kaia’s classroom got fired. She sent a message in the daycare app to all the parents of her students, stating that she had just gotten fired for using her phone yesterday, and she loved us all and was sorry she did not have a chance to say goodbye.

I spoke to the center owner when I went to pick up Kaia late this afternoon. He said that this teacher did not pass her performance review. She had regular behavioral issues, was not fully focused while in the classroom, and had been gossiping about administration staff to the parents and giving one-sided stories that were unfair. Granted, I never really noticed any of this even with camera access to the classrooms, but daycare politics are like any other workplace: he said/she said stories and a bunch of workplace bs. I said I’d take his word for it, but for the most part, since the center director had quit suddenly, we have seen a lot of inconsistency and poor communication from the administration and would prefer more transparency.

Is this a little nuts? Yes. But… Regardless, I still prefer this to having a nanny.