Have you ever had an employee with children that attend your daycare? If so, how did you work that? Did you give them cheaper/free daycare for their child and pay them less, or charge them and pay them more, or do nothing and pay them the same and charge normally for their child?

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My assisstant has 3 kids and none of them come here. I simply don't have room for them so she takes them to a center down the street

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I had an assistant for one year. I paid her $300 a week, and her own son came with her. It worked out well!

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If I hire an assistant, I am hoping she will have a child to bring b/c I feel I can pay her less if she does. I was planning on paying $13/hour, but feel that $10 is fair if they bring a kid.

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Years ago, I hired a gal who had 2 kids to be my sub/assistant.

Her oldest was a DCK and she was looking for extra work so I offered her a job.

She still worked her other job and what I did was allow her pay me for child care by working for me.

It worked out great for a long time. She even had a second child and still continued to work for me.

After a while though, there were issues with her children doing something or fighting with the other DCK's and parent's started complaining that the sub's children were getting special treatment.

I found out later that she was also allowing her children to do/say things that I would NEVER have been ok with and it just became more of a headache than it was worth.

Eventually, we parted ways on not-so-good terms and I learned a HUGE lesson: NEVER hire an employee who has children that need to attend child care.

Kids never behave the same way when their parents are around.

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I've had both good and bad experiences. The first was excellent and her son was excellent. She was very part time (1-2 month). The second time, the dd was not very well behaved and was such a headache! I paid her the same rate because it was not agreed for her to bring dd ( long story there!)

The third - was also a mom of one of my dck. It had worked out great! She works about 1-2x month and sometimes brings dd. it was difficult at forst because dd was trying to challenge us both, but now dd understands that when in daycare, I'm in charge.

That being said- I would recommend setting ground rules from the start.

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I havn't had an employee yet that had kids of their own however I already know how I will handle it if the situation arises. My fee is my fee and their pay is their pay.

In other words if I have room for their child(ren) then they will follow the same guidelines as normal clients and that includes their fees. They will pay the same amount in fees as any other client that I have. They will pay me when my dues are due. Their pay will be what my pay is and that will be paid to them in a check.

I will not give them a discount. I will not deduct their child care fees from their fess and pay them the balance, and vise versa. My regular clients don't get sibling discounts or any other type of discount and therefore neither will my employees.

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I have had two employees in the past that brought their children with them and both ended badly. One was really not able to get her own kid under control (very clingy and crying) and was never able to handle my group and I fired her. And this was a public school teacher....yikes. The other quit after two shifts....she had a lot of experience with daycare but realized very quickly that doing daycare with your own child in the group was no easy task.

I dont hire people that bring kids with them, period. And I know a lot of providers that feel the same way. Its pretty rare that a mom is able to handle that and the kid is able to handle that.

One thing I would do is trade assistant care for daycare but only if mom and kid were not here at the same time. like if they worked while their child was at school and I watched their child at other times in trade.

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My assistant has a child that comes with her. So far it has been fine. She was a stay at home mom. Her child gets some time to socialize, I have an employee, win-win for us so far. If you do this, I think you need to be honest with yourself about a few things.

1. Biology wins - she will spend more time with her own child than the daycare kids, and her child will be treated differently by her. (Heck - we all do this with our own kids)

2. Her child will most likely act out for her more than the other dck's (just as our own tend to be our most difficult).

I wanted to find an employee that would be dedicated to their job. I was having difficulty finding someone interested. I also needed to find someone who would be able to run things while I'm on maternity leave. So they needed to have the flexibility to work FT for that time, but otherwise only work PT.

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I've only had a part time assistant for a few years and she started as a home schooled 12 year old (going on 20 ) and still worked occasionally for me still when she went to college. A long time but only a few hours a week.

BUT, I did have a client who was a lawn/landscape guy and I hired him to cut our grass.

I did as you say because that way if I didn't like his job then his services and mine would not be connected. As it turns out, that was the right decision. He often would leave our grass go and I'd practically have to beg him to cut it. It turned out that they were kind of a deadbeat family. He hired my son to work with him and in the end didn't pay him until my son finally quit. Luckily this guy's mom was a sweetheart and hated what her son did to mine so SHE paid him what he was due. By that time I wasn't watching their child anymore but what a nightmare. You just never know. I'd always keep things separate.

Laurel

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