Why I decided to start my own family day care

[So after yesterday’s post on the registration process for setting up a family day care, I thought I’d also share on the how and why I came to the decision to embark on this venture…]

Since the arrival of my first baby, I discovered that my priorities in relation to work and career had changed dramatically. I wanted to be around my children as much as possible and be the main person looking after them and caring for their needs.

After my maternity leave ended, I went back to work on a part time basis. It was a great arrangement that allowed me to balance my time between career and motherhood. However in the long term, I knew it would be difficult to progress forward professionally working on a part-time basis.

So I started thinking about what I really wanted and the direction I truly wanted to head toward.

What I really wanted was to BE in my children’s life. I wanted to be the primary person guiding their learning and helping to shape their values and character, especially in their early formative years.

Somehow it didn’t sit right with me that if I went back to work full time, they would be looked after by someone else, while I worked at the office all day.

I’m aware that many people may not have a choice in this area.

But what if I had a choice?

What would I choose?

I would choose to be my children’s first and primary teacher.

I would choose to be around them as much as I can.

I would choose not to miss witnessing them play and learn every day.

So I started thinking seriously about my options for being able to stay at home with my children, especially from a financial perspective.

The idea for starting a family day care came about when my son first started going to a family day care in our neighbourhood.

One evening as I was unpacking Nathan’s day care bag and flipping through the day’s notes from our carer. I started thinking about how much I loved the family day care he goes to and how terrific his carer is.

I admired the fact that our educator was able to be at home with her own kids and also have her own little business running her own a family day care.

Then I had an epiphany. Family day care. This seemed like something I could do.

Of course there were a lot of pros and cons to consider. But once I started thinking about it, I knew this was something I wanted to do.

So here I am now.

Right now, I am just at the early stages of this journey. I’ve just recently completed my registration process and am now putting various finishing touches to our home set up, ready to receive my first client.

With my feet on this new path, I am looking ahead in anticipation of the exciting new things to come.

Linking up to Jess @ IBOT

 

This is an exciting new venture I am embarking on to set up my own family day care. Throughout this journey, I will be sharing about this project, the application process, what I’ll be learning from the training courses, my home set up, craft and activity ideas and other related bits and pieces. Through this, I hope to support and connect with other fellow day care educators and also perhaps provide a little more awareness and insight for parents (and parents-to-be) on the set up and running of a family day care. You can follow along my updates on my blog under the family day care tag.