I also allowed the parents to control my daycare a little while ago. I posted a lot of threads about it on this forum. I allowed the parents to take control of my daycare for the same reason you did - just to get some kids! In my area, there are way too many people providing child care. Within a 5 minute drive, there are 7 daycare centers! In my neighborhood alone, if we moved the licensed providers around to even them out, we could probably put 1 licensed provider on every street! Then there are God knows how many illegal babysitters here. We could probably put 2 illegal babysitters on every street in my neighborhood. So, with so many people offering child care in my area, it's hard for us licensed providers to get enough kids. Most of us are licensed for 8 (the max here) kids, and a few years ago, most of us would have our full 8 kids with no problem. But now, most of us average 4 kids!

So, for the reasons above, I started allowing the parents to tell me what they wanted me to do, make their own hours, basically, I was trying to please everyone that was willing to come to an interview. My schedule was crazy, my daycare had absolutely no routine or schedule, so my day was crazy. Some parents wanted their child to sleep for 3 hours, some didn't want their child to sleep at all, so I allowed them to stay up, which of course made it harder for the others to sleep. Some wanted their child to do preschool papers and activities, others didn't want their kids to do them and just wanted their children to 'be children' and play. My day drove me crazy! I started being angry 24/7, scatter-brained from the stress and confusion of the day, and hateful. I lost respect for myself and lost pride in my daycare.

So, I decided one day, after many posts and requests for advice from this forum, to make it all stop! I did not wait until my yearly contracts were up, when I decided that I had enough, I made immediate changes. One random day, I simply told the parents at pick up time, that this arrangement wasn't working for me or the daycare children. I told each parent that whatever special requests they made were causing confusion and disturbing the other children as well as disrupting the flow of the daycare day. I told them that I was going to have to go back to operating my daycare as I always had for the past 25 years and go back to my typical routine and activities. Some of the parents stayed and some left. I became even more broke than I was. But I had peace of mind back. I wasn't angry and hateful. I stopped having nightmares about the craziness of my days and I stopped waking up every morning dreading my day before it even started. I had regained my self-respect and pride in my company.

So, my suggestion would be not to wait months to regain control over your daycare. I would suggest that you take back your daycare immediately! However, keep in mind that doing so might make you lose every client you have. You do need to take care of yourself financially. If you can't take a chance on losing your current clients, maybe you can advertise for new kids and tell those parents you will run your daycare the way you really want to run it and after a couple of weeks, stop watching the ones who want your daycare to be operated their way.

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