Originally Posted by Josiegirl:
I'm also sorry this has all happened to you and your wife. I can't say how to help because not knowing your area, your demand, etc., etc., every area is different and unique in its offerings and needs.
Has your local resource agency been any support at all? What about connecting up with other local providers?
A lot of people look to opening daycare as an easy way to make money and as you've found out, it clearly is not. I'm not saying you thought it was easy but someone led you to many misconceptions. It sounds like it's time to rethink your path and find something that would be less exhausting and draining.
Quite frankly, it's our local resource agency and local county licensors that caused the problem in the first place. We were taking care of 2 kids for a friend, and we enjoyed it, and wondered what the next step might be. So we went to the informational session and they presented statistics that the local licensed providers only filled 51% of the projected spots, and they told stories of multiple providers that were fully booked before they had even opened. All we had to do was register with the agency and the kids would drop out of the sky, parents begging us to enroll them, offering money to get on the waiting list, etc.
It was similar to immigrants in the early 1900s who had been told that the streets of America were paved with gold. We were told that all we had to do was get licensed and we would be full with no effort and before we even were open. But it was all a huge lie. We only had 5 kids for the first 5 months after opening, then we had some very part-time kids, and a few more trickled in. We then lost 5 kids (some part-time, some full-time) in May when school ended, and we didn't fill those spots until December. So it wasn't until December 2016, 15 months after opening, that we were consistently full.
Unfortunately, there is no job that I could get with my chronic anxiety and depression that even comes close to what we make from daycare each month. Between county assistance and food program payments, I couldn't make that even working 40 hours at Walmart.