Childcare: What we wish we'd known when we started out, Ep 4

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three and a practicing physician. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to episode four. This week, we are talking childcare and what we wish we'd known when we started out many many years ago, five years ago for Sarah and about ten years ago for me. Laura, which I realized the other day was about when you started blogging, wasn't it, Sarah? When did you start your blog the Shoe Box? I started my blog, Oh my gosh, I guess in two thousand and four, So it's been like thirteen years at this point, which is basically like dinosaur age for any kind of a blog. And in fact, I don't even like the word blog anymore, Like I feel like saying blog itself sounds dated. But yeah, I've been doing it for a really long time. It's just been such a creative outlet for me. I started it in med school when I felt like I really needed somewhere to kind of vent. Of course, never about specific patients, but just about my experiences as a medical student. And somehow I just I don't really I'm not like Artie, Like I don't do crafts. I can't knit. My sister's an amazing knitter, but I can't do it. And for me, this was like my creative outlet, something that I could do that kind of kept my mind busy and away from kind of the structured thinking of medicine. And I always loved writing, so just kind of stuck with it. What about you, Well, I started a little later that you, but you must have been among the first bloggers been out there. I was pretty early. I was pretty early. Yeah. Actually I once went to a blogging conference and I think I won some prize for being like the earliest. I mean, how did you even know that this was a thing people were doing. One of my best friends from college actually had one, and I think I copied hers, and then hers is long gone now, but it just stuck with me. So yes, I was I was early. I was definitely. I love how it's evolved over the years. I mean, the readership, the topics you cover. I mean, was it hard to stick with it at the beginning? I mean you no, I like loved it. Like all of a sudden, I was like, oh, writing this daily event totally resonates with my personality. You know, both of us have that little bit of tendency towards streaks. We'll have to talk about that on a different episode, but you know, it just it was. It was easily a habit that I incorporated and became like a real, like kind of healthy way for me to vent and express myself during recy when I didn't feel like I had that outlet elsewhere. Did you know, I'm really curious if if you ever raid your old posts from like the beginning, do you see that? Oh my god, it's so embarrassing, But yes, I read my blog. I read my own blog like plenty. So first of all, I mean, now that I have kids, I love using it as sort of like an adjunct photo album. And I will go back, like right now. The other day I was going back and looking at posts from when Annabelle and Cameron were little babies, sort of trying to remind myself of what it's like. And I guess it's a little it's sort of creepy, but it's like, you know, seeing your own perspective on something can be incredibly enlightening because you actually don't remember how you felt. So that's been really really interesting. And wasn't called the shoe box at the beginning because you didn't become Sarah Heart Hunger until later in coact the blogging process. That's very yes, that's that's a journalistic observation. It actually had a it had a horrible name. And again remember this is like the early days of blogging, like people were live journaling, and I was also twenty four years old, and it was called Lost and All Alone. Oh, because it was actually supposed to start out. It's just like a month long thing. And the reason I was Lost and All Alone wasn't that I was really lost in all alone. I mean I was already Josh was my boyfriend. Like life was not bad, but I had been put in this pediatric's rotation out in coastal No. It was like central North Carolina and a very small town where I knew no one living in this sort of random house with with people I didn't know, so I felt very isolated during that time, and that's actually when the blog was born. So if you go back to my first posts, I'm talking all about my experiences there, and you know, it is a little embarrassing because your young eyes. You know, I say things back then that when I look at them now sort of make me cringe. But hey, that's what twenty four year old me was experiencing. So I'm not taking it down. I'm just gonna leave life well. I have owned Laura vander Caamp since two thousand and two, but I never became very focused on maintaining it and putting stuff up there until about I would say two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, And it was around the time I got the contract to write one hundred and sixty eight Hours, and I recognized that having a home on the internet and blogging would be a good way for people to reach me, to get to know me, to build a platform. We always talk about that in the author of world, about how people know you and know the topics you write about. So I really began writing for that, and it was not always easy to keep going at the beginning, partly because I write for a living and so the idea of writing these posts for free was always like, wait a minute, why am I doing this? But over time it's the only thing I've actually stuck with of all my writing gigs, and it's because I have such complete freedom to write about whatever I want to a degree though, because now I know so much of who my audience is, that there's some things I'm not going to go into and all that. And I've certainly learned my lesson with a few political remote posts that have happened over the years that a lot of people either have different opinions or they argue with each other, and it's just not the kind of blog I want to have. So now you know, it's pretty much my life and time management and productivity and a few you know, current events related to that. But it's so addictive, Like once you actually have an audience and you know that you're not writing for no one, it becomes a lot easier to stick with. Ear at least that's what I've found. I think it definitely comes across in your writings that you enjoy doing it, whether that's just because it's sort of a habit for you. But I did wonder about that because it's not really a break the wa For me, it is not a break, But on the other hand, it helps me. I mean, I think it helps hone my ideas because I can see what people react to. So if I get a lot of reactions to a certain topic, I know that I might be onto something. It certainly has helped me write tighter and write faster, and now I sort of take that for granted that if somebody told me to write five hundred words on a topic and turn it into them in an hour, I could completely do that. And I'm not sure that's a skill I had starting off with blogging. So I think the ability to write tightly in a first draft that you only review once or twice, it's just not the way I sort of learned to write. And so it's been helpful from that perspective, especially as the digital world of publishing grows. But yeah, no, it's been fun. So we've both That's how we kind of found each other, I think is through our blogs. Definitely. I think I've been reading years since, shortly after when sixty eight Hours came out. Yeah, so that's kind of we've learned each other's lives through there, and one of the topics, I mean, bringing us to our our main segment for today, one of the topics that both of us have written about is childcare and our various iterations of this over the years. So Sarah like looking back to Sarah of Annabel is born twenty Annabel was born in twenty twelve. Yeah, yeah, And so after she's born in spring of twenty twelve, I mean, what would you have wanted Sarah of twenty seventeen to have Sarah of twenty twelve know about childcare? Well, I don't know. I think our experiences are a little different there, because I actually I have no regrets. I think I did things really well back then, and I look upon those days fondly. Although I will say that what worked for Sarah in twenty twelve would not work for Sarah in twenty seventeen. So it's not like I feel like, oh, I did it wrong. But I've had sort of two different experiences, and you know, who knows, things may evolve into a third situation someday that looks nothing like what I'm doing now. But I will kind of take you guys back, and then I want to hear you too, because it'll be very interesting going from you know, one kid in New York to four kids in suburbia. But for us, we lived in Durham, North Carolina. My husband and I were both in medical training, and we really didn't have a whole lot of choices, and nanny is something we could have considered, but would have required borrowing significant amounts of money because you know, cost of a nanny for one child isn't cost effective compared to even a fairly pricey daycare. You know, that was a significant factor for us back then. Things definitely change when you have more kids, and we'll talk about later, but we were fortunate enough to have a university affiliated daycare that we used back when we were at Duke. You know, I did look at several centers there were there were actually several really nice centers in the area, and the one at Duke was excellent because it was open for my believe six thirty or seven in the morning, it had nice, adequate hours, and then it closed at about six And as a fellow in anochronology, thankfully, and I had sort of done this on purpose, I had to work long hours like I had many weeks that were fifty sixty hours total if you include weekends, and I'll also talk about how we did those. But I had fairly predictable hours, and my time at home at night was just more answering phone calls than it was the need to go in, So I didn't need necessarily dedicated care for that time. So we we Sorry, I just wanted to ask a question here because I think a lot of our listeners maybe one when you say it was like a really good daycare, I mean, what do you find me a good daycare? I mean, well, they're I mean the first thing is word of mouth. So you talk to everyone in the area, you find out, you know, are there other people with older kids who have been through this for a while whose opinions you trust, are aware of how this daycare run. So I think word of mouth is probably the biggest thing that helped, you know, make this choice. There's actually going there and sort of seeing the vibe the place. Is it clean, do the kids look engaged? Are their screens because for me, that was like in a daycare like a debt, like a deal breaker. Then there is their ratings, so there are actually na eyc I believe there's a certification agency that rates daycares and they can add up to five stars so that you can actually get a little bit of an objective viewpoint. There's ratio of providers to children, which was really important, especially for the infants, and I believe that, you know, most of the really good ones go down to as low as like three to one or four to one. So looking at all of those things and sort of combining that with the general reputation, that helped me feel really confident that we were putting Annabelle in a great place. My memories of that time. I know people kind of talk about the slog of getting your kids ready, but when there's only one of them and they're little, it's not that hard. It was fine. I like loader up in the stroller, we drove, it was on the way to work, did the drop off, prep the bottles. It was great. So for that time in life, it worked wonderful and I have nothing against it. To the point where after we moved here, even after we did hire nanny and Laura and I will both talk about that a little bit later, we put her in daycare for half the day because I wanted her to have that busy, multiple kid atmosphere that she was used to. I actually think it's really healthy for kids, like a wonderful thing. And I don't understand why some people talk about it like it's baby jail or baby prison. I mean, I don't get that either. I think that there's a lot of lingering, bad feelings about well, first, the idea of mother's working, right, So then if children need to be in childcare, that must be a bad thing too, because we can't in any way sanction the idea of mothers working. I mean, this is honestly the thought process. And I remember hearing this, and I'm of course bringing my oldest. I mean, we'll both get talked to our journeys here, but I mean, just covering the daycare topic here, I would bring my oldest child to daycare. We did daycare when we lived in New York because again we just had one. There was a high quality center that was a quarter mile from our apartment. I had put my name in when I was roughly four months pregnant, so I had a spot when he was four months old, because you know that's oh, I got to interject here and say that I put my name in the day I had a positive pregnancy to us, and I had to because I actually did have a way to wait. And so, okay, that is pro tip here that if you think you're going to want to go the daycare route, get your name on the list as soon as you know you are pregnant. You can always not do it right, you can always not use the center, you can cancel whatever. But having that as an option is going to be a lot better than saying, oh, well, you know, maybe when I'm on maternity leave, I'll think about it. I mean, no, you got to think about that ahead of time. But yeah, we had a really good pace. We became best of friends with these other families that we knew from the time that my son was four months old, and he stayed in that daycare until he was four, even though again we hired a nanny as well when he was about two years old. He stayed in it more part time as preschool. We got to be such good friends with the parents because they were all like us, these all dual income couples who had kids the exact same age. So we'd all go to birthday parties, we'd hang out. It was It was really awesome, but I think that some people really just don't like the daycare concept. You know, there are for whatever reason. I had recommended my daycare center to a number of people, and I had a few come afterwards and be like, well, the staff looks tired. I could never put my kids in a place like that. I'm like, okay, a, it's four o'clock in the afternoon. Let's see how you look at four o'clock in the afternoon dealing with you know, a taddler all day. But the truth is they didn't want to go back to work, and so it becomes easier to use another excuse, say oh, I couldn't find a good childcare option, rather than admit, like, you don't want to go back to work, and that's fine, Like make that choice, but you know, don't make it be about something else. Well, and this is a little controversial, but some people tend to make that argument about their kid. So I think it's a perfectly valid argument when it comes to making it for yourself. Like if I had chosen, if I had that opportunity at that time or whatever, that I wanted those years for myself with my baby, then I think that's perfectly valid for me. But the argument that like somehow my child will suffer or not have the same opportunities, or not create a normal bond or something. I hear that a lot, and there's really no scientific evidence whatsoever to support that. So more power to mothers who want to stay home with their kids. I actually think there's nothing wrong with that, and it's wonderful and if you want to have that experience, but I think we have to be careful about who we say we're doing it for. Yeah, or even using lines that in many cases aren't supported by the fact, like you know that my child will be with someone else for the majority of his waking hours. I actually ran the numbers on this and it wasn't true. Working full time having my kid at daycare, I was still with the kid more hours, more waking hours then daycare was. And that's just again, it's one of these stories people tell because they're unhappy with Now. I will say daycare is not perfect. One of the reasons we wound up later hiring a nanny, and we will both talk about this is the illness factor. Yeah, even the best run daycare kids get sick a lot. When they're little, they're developing their immune systems. Over time, it'll be great, Like by the time they go to kindergarten, they'll have everything out of their system, they'll never get sick again. Yeah, I actually don't know if there's literature on that, but I've had the same experience. Like Annabelle who had that daycare, seems to be more immune now than I remember, like or even by age three than Cameron was. So that's interesting, I have to but the problem is that you have to get through all those illnesses. And I know that the first year where my son was in daycare, I probably would have missed about five weeks of work if I had been, you know, in a normal job, and that would have been really hard to handle. And even if you know, i'd been splitting it with my husband, each of us taking you know, two weeks or so, it's a lot of time. And it would have had eaten up any sort of vacation in sick and personal days we would have had. And so especially if you're trying to figure out how am I going to combine work in life, like it's gonna be hard to do, and then you hit these you know, constant like I can't bring my kid back to daycare because he's got a slight fever and so we got to wait twenty five. It can really mess with your ability to keep your foot on the gas with your career. And then there's also I mean, I think you and if your daycare isn't a good place, which many people don't have great choices about what they want to do, because even high quality daycare may be less expensive than a nanny, but it can still be very expens and so some people are relying on less high quality places, and so then that's hard to be able to relieve your kid there either. But so why did you decide to go the nanny route? Then after moving to Miami? I mean, obviously you both got jobs, So there's that, yes, so there was that we did. Actually, you know, we would have been fine with the daycare to start with, because what I was going to point out is that you kind of need if you have a career that's not terribly flexible, and you know that what you really kind of have to plan to assume your child is going to get sick and monthly is normal. So if your kid is out of daycare for three to four days per month, that's actually kind of like statistically like par for the course, so you can't sort of assume that that won't happen. You have to have a backup plan. So the things I was going to mention is number one, discussing that with your spouse that that's not or your partner that that's not solely your responsibility having birthed the child. It's just because you birthed the child or happened to be the female and the relationship. That's something that's really important to discuss with your partner. How are we going to do this so that you know, if you have an equitable kind of arrangement, then that means you can cut those expected days in half, which made me more doable. The second thing is to find another layer somewhere. Now for some people that's family. When we were in North Carolina, I didn't really have that option, but there are actually a few, and I feel like this is becoming more common. Commercial solutions cropping up for this. There are some workplaces actually offer some an emergency care program through like their employee assistance, So definitely look into that if you work for sort of a corporate environment or there are some private companies. If you're in a metropolitan area. There's one in our area where basically it is it's an expensive hourly rate, but as a fallback, knowing that you know, with two hours notice you could have someone help you for the day is incredibly valuable and can actually be somewhat cost savings if you're using that to avoid having to hire a full time caregiver. So, for example, my husband, one of the surgeons that he works with, she has three children, all under the age of four. It's like crazy over there. But and she and her husband are actually both physicians as well, and I believe at least one or two of them got sick. She called this service and she did bring them with her to work for like thirty minutes, but then the babysitter met them there at work and took over from there. And sort of, yes, it's an outlay of cash, but since they were otherwise just in daycare, that made more sense to do it on that emergency basis rather than having someone like on retainer all the time. Like that worked for them. And there may be as you're building up a sitter portfolio, which is one of the phrases we use that, especially if you have daycare as your primary option. You need a suite of backup sitters, partly for if you work late. For instance, somebody needs to be able to pick up the kid at daycare because there's going to be a hard stop on the daycare at time. You probably need people for date night or occasional weekend stuff. But then also having somebody who has during the day availability of some sort. Maybe it's a neighbor who's retired, or it could be a college student with a light class load, so you know, maybe Mondays and Fridays she's generally available, so if you need backup on those days, you have it. So there are ways you can make this work. And of course if you live near family, that is great. It is amazing how much money you can save on childcare by having family around for those just things on the margins, even if you're not using them as full time care, which I'm not sure how many people want to do that be your full time caregiver, but they may be willing to say, oh, okay, well you got stuck at work late, I can pick your kid up at daycare at five thirty if you have a relative who could do that, or you know, if Grandma's nearby and the kid is just recovering from a slight fever and could spend the day there because they can't go back to daycare. That can help a lot, and I didn't necessarily know that going in. We weren't around family, so I had to build up that suite of sitters to cover those days when I did have something that I couldn't not do. But it was very stressful, and I mean, one of the reasons we went to a nanny when our second child arrived is first because you know, there was the cost effect in this argument once you have two kids, and the idea of getting two kids ready for daycare every day sort of made me go crazy. But some ofw that does that is one of those tasks where the more people you have to get out the door. You know, even though we did preach about zero to one being the biggest transition, there is a multiplier factor in leaving the house for some reason, I hear you. And so we wound up hiring a nanny with the second and then that cut down the number of days because obviously a nanny can get sick too or have a reason she can't come, but it's more likely that she will be able to be there, especially if the kid has a mild illness that keeps them out of daycare, but that you don't have to be home dealing with it. And you guys wound up going that route then too, So yes, we did. We did so again. When we moved here. I just had one child and Annabel was about sixteen months. We started her in a daycare. It became very quickly evident it was not a good fit for us that particular daycare. I think I mentioned the screens. There was also an episode where she came home with a bite, which is not a reason to leave a daycare whatsoever. I'm not avating that that just happened, but nobody knew about the bite. That's the problem and something. I mean, if no one noticed the bite happening, then that spoke to a level of supervision that didn't seem quite optimal. So we actually went on care dot com. I was sort of in a panic at this point because I had already started work and we needed to do something, and I knew I kind of wanted to make the transition sooner rather than later. And actually we did two things. We did find another daycare, which is where she ended up going to preschool until just a couple of days ago when we made the kindergarten transition. Then we also ended up I think I told my husband, I was like, listen, I'm not due with baby number two until February, but it was like September. But I'm like, I'm just gonna put my feelers out because I kind of think this is something we should look for and if we find the right person, then we can discuss. And I went through a million applications. Care dot Com again not sponsored. There are other similar websites, but in our areas seem to be one of the most heavily used. And I got a lot of people that wrote back, but many of them didn't sound serious. And it's it's really important if you're going to post an ad, to kind of put very specific questions and requirements in your ad for them to respond to, because then that's an instant filter because you kind of know that if somebody is not reading your instructions in an email, then they're probably not gonna listen to the echuse later on either. And you also want to fill out I mean what you want, like, yeah, don't be overly broad. I mean, it's if there are certain things that are going to be deal killers, then that's something you need to know, and certainly I have learned this. I have now hired four full time nannies over the years. In sequence, we're on our fourth one now, and I know that I need somebody who has a lot of energy because I have a lot of very active kids. But something I'm also very clear upfront about is that I work from home, and you have to be okay with that. And I think there are many nannies who want to be the master of the domain as it were, when they're working, like they don't want another adult there per se, because the kids might get confused, they might not be fully in charge, I think, And I am clear that you know you're in charge. I'm staying in my office, I'm working, but it is going to be a team thing, and so people have to be okay with that, and I need to be upfront about that too. And another thing to be upfront with in your screening is if you are paying on the books, which you should go ahead say that because unfortunately for some caregivers that is a deal killer on their end, and you don't want to hire those people. I mean and it's very important to explain if it's a caregiver who hasn't done that before, the benefits to the caregiver of being on the books, such as they will get, you know, reemployment benefits once they stop working. You know, they're no longer going to have to be fearful. You know. I think that you know, once you explain it to somebody, they usually will see the benefit. I will say that we had to kind of work that into our negotiation. It ended up working out very well. But yes, I think it's very important to be upfront about that. And because they accrue Social Security credits, so when they retire, they'll get social Security benefits. You said, unemployment insurance. So if for instance, you move and your nanny is not going to come with you, suddenly they are unemployed. If you haven't been paying on the books, they have no access to unemployment insurance, whereas if you have been paying on the books, then they do, and so they can collect benefits for whatever it is the twenty six weeks that a lot of states have, so it's a protection for them that is quite important. Plus it's just the law, so you know, one of the things and Sarah and I have both talked about is trying not to be cheap when it comes to childcare. A lot of people are always trying to save money on childcare. I get these, you know, requests of people trying to interview me for stories on how can I save money on childcare. I'm like, oh, well, there's no point in spending money just to spend money, but I would look at other places to save money in your life first, like live in a smaller house, drive an older car, like you know, come on this, this is not the right place to try and be as you know, low budget as you can possibly go so so paying legally obviously is a big one of that. Getting as much care as you need this is really something I you know, people try to get away with as little as possible sometimes as like okay, you know, if you know that you're gonna get stuck working late, sometimes just go ahead and hire for the extra hours, like it's going to take a huge load off your mind. Or if you need two caregivers, which you might. I've talked to people who'd be like, oh, I guess I just can't keep it good nanny. I'm like, well, how many hours are you expecting them? To work and it's they're working sixty hours a week a well, no wonder, like you can't keep people. They're getting burnt out. Like if it's more than I would say, fifty hours, you should strongly consider hiring a second caregiver, you know, if it's a part time person or even just for a few hours a week, but having at least two people sort of in your suite helps with staffing as it were, which I think both of us, you know, didn't really grow up thinking about those things. I don't know about you, No, it was not my life growing up. And I know as we're talking about this, there are people listening to us who are having their little like privileged lights going on, which is fine, Like, yes, this this comes from a place of having gone into careers that require a lot of hours and our husbands as well. And part of that with having children is that you need to then hire help. And so yes, we can talk about privilege, and I think we're both very grateful that we are in a position to do this, but it's also just reality. I have had to learn that over time because I didn't have that growing up. I have, you know, my parents cobbled stuff to gather through various friends and family, and they're switching off hours and they made it work. I don't think it was very easy, but they definitely made it work. But then as I've become a parent myself and have seen what other people who maybe did grow up in a environment with more resources have done, I've been like, oh, I didn't even know you could do that, Like it didn't occur to me to hire a nanny when I had one kid, because that just wasn't something I knew. I have seen people who've done such things as hire a weekend nanny, which I also had no idea you could do, like you could hire somebody for hours when you weren't working, Like, who knew that this was actually a choice. So we don't have we do not have a regular weekend nanny. But actually, I think three years into working, my husband and I felt like we were alternating, like working the weekends. So during residency, that's how we had to handle it. We just truly didn't have the resources at that time, so either I was going to work or he was going to work, and that way we didn't have to worry about backup care on the weekends, which is why day care worked, but now we started out that way and then was like, wait, when do we get to be a family, Like we've worked a really long time to kind of get to this place where we have kids and we have jobs that aren't as quite as crazy as residency. Why we never see each other and we realize ding ding ding weekend childcare and sinking up our call. And so we made that transition in the beginning of twenty sixteen. And you're right, it like literally didn't even occur to me. But I hope maybe hearing this helps others realize if you and your husband both have to work, you know, every other every third or even every fourth weekend, you can actually get some of your weekends back together by considering some childcare on the weekends. That's been an absolute, like a huge life improvement hack for us. Yeah, or even just having a few hours to relax or get you know, errands done that you need to without having to bring three kids with you, or if you have lots of kids and activities, we've sometimes hired sitters on weekends because one kid has a swim meet, another kid has a wrestling meet. In that way, we don't have to take the two little kids with us as each parent is covering a sporting event. That's key. A couple other things just practical. If you've got a lot of travel in your life, you may need to negotiate overnight rates. Obviously you got to hire somebody that is willing to stay overnight and then you know, negotiate overnight coverage what that rate will be. Well, one very elegant solution for that. And I did want to mention this is an O pair And I have a number of friends, especially with school aged children, who participate in the O pair program where you have somebody come from another country and they're able to work to up to forty five hours of childcare a week. But you can arrange that however you want. So if the kids are in school, an O pair can be perfect for those overnights and sort of unpredictable travel schedule. Well, one thing I would say with that, though, actually is that there are certain visa requirements on the O pair thing. Most of them are actually not supposed to stay overnight with the kids. Really, yes, yeah, you know that. Legally they are not allowed to stay with children who are under three months of age. They are not allowed to stay overnight alone with the children. That's part of the I know those things are. That's very Paul, thank you. I bet that. I bet listeners didn't know that he was. I'd not heard that. As you're sponsoring the whatever it's Jay something visa for your o pair, they are not supposed to be overnight. So it's it's unfortunately, it's not a good solution for that. I will say that's probably no one has ever been like prosecuted for that that I know of, because most people would not. But you know, you want to follow the law, you want to follow the rules. Well, it might help. It might help if the like if one partner was working, like not if both parents are traveling. But let's say, in our case, if my husband was going to get home unpredictable hour, like at eight or nine pm maybe, but I was going to be away. Yeah, then it might be very helpful. But I guess you're right, So both parents going away, that would not work. But obviously if it's if it's usually just one parent who's traveling, that can be very helpful because then the hours can be wherever they are. So a lot of people have found that great. They are younger and so sometimes that's really fun for the kids to have, like a older brother or sister. One thing I would say with that to be careful though, is that it is an older brother or sister in the sense that these are young people who are yeah, eighteen and twenty three years of age, which means that whatever your nineteen year old daughter would do that would drive you crazy, is something that your nineteen year old OH pair might do that will drive you crazy or get into trouble doing. I mean, I've definitely heard stories of OH pairs winding up, you know, unexpectedly pregnant for instance, and heading home, or you know, having car accidents because they're new drivers, or you know, just things like that. So keeping in mind that these people are still, in many cases teenagers. They are away from home for what might be the first time. Many are wonderful, but many are working through those issues. So it's something to just keep in mind. There are upsides and downsides of all forms of care. So because of that, we have not gone the opair route. Instead, what we've done is our full time nanny is willing to work overtime overnight if we ask for ahead of time, and so that's been a really great solution with us. The kids love her. She's got the routine down. And again because she's our full time employee, that's just she she builds that into her life. She doesn't have other things that she's planning on doing Monday through Thursday, so she can take those hours on. So we found that that's really great. I think in general, treating your caregivers like real employees because they are, it goes a long way toward making people be good employees. So again, paying legally, I use I use GTM payroll. Who do you use? By the way, Actually we do a homegrown thing that I learned from my one of my family members who is used to having household employees. So we actually file it by yourself. It's not that terrible, but you do need to have an account and kind of help you set everything up and put everything id to start out with. Yes, because you can be mailing checks to the treasury as the employer. I mean, that's that's one of one of the things withholding taxes and all that that you have to do. Yes, well, and you can do that. So it's different for you because you're self employed. But if you work for a company, you can actually just have that additional money withheld fairly easily. You just contact you know, whoever's in charge of payroll and you say, oh, I like X amount of dollars held monthly or quarterly, and then that that can account for it. So it is doable. Yeah, but just make sure you get the advice of people who truly know what they're doing. All on account, not just us. But yeah, we went with GTM because they were again this is non sponsored, but they are relatively affordable, and then they handle all of it. And one of the things I have found is that we get between New York and Pennsylvania. Maybe Miami is more employer friendly. I don't know, but I swear I get some sort of angry letter from tax authorities every couple months when I've lived in New York and lived in Pennsylvania, and it's almost always nothing like it turns out there is nothing. It's just that they sent this letter out to everyone for unknown reasons, I don't know, maybe to see if they can come up with back taxes from people who owe it. But of course if you don't owe back taxes, you're like, well, what's going on? Like, why am I getting this angry letter. It helps to have a service for us because then they can tell me, oh, that's nothing. So I've found that very helpful as well, and so I've been glad to have that. So yeah, those are some of the things we've I mean, it's really been a growing experience. The other thing is that you know, no situation lasts forever. We've certainly, I mean we've had wonderful nanny's, but we know that in general, after two or three years they decide to move on. That's to be expected. I've never felt like I wanted someone to move on, which is good, but you know, people want to do other things sometimes, or they move or you know, so that's life. I was going to mention with respect to the no situation lasting forever, is that it is expensive. It's very expensive to have multiple layers of childcare in place, but it's not permanent. So you know, when you're thinking about it with respect to your budget, I do know that this is a somewhat temporary expense. I mean, once you have multiple school age kids or kids that are old enough that can actually you know, stay in the house by themselves, that does eventually happen. You know, you may find your outlay of costs to be much less. So, I mean, I think I remember thinking of this as like, oh, when I was in residency, like how how could I possibly, like, you know, pay that forever? But the truth is, you know, you're not. I'm sure that means other expenses are going to come up, but you won't be paying for college and childcare hopefully simultaneously, unless your kids are really you'd have to have a really far age. Yeah. But even for some people, like knowing that you're gonna have the multiple layers when your children are prior to kindergarten, and then maybe after that considering something more flexible and less expensive like in O pair or outside daycare, it could work. But for those young childhood years, like those intense like zero to five years, you know, I hate to say it makes sense to borrow from your future self, but in this particular case, if you feel like you can make those numbers work, it actually may makes sense. Yeah. I mean a couple of things to think about with this. First is, don't charge the cost of childcare solely against your own salary. If you are co parenting with someone, it is a joint expense. And I know that the mindset people go through is like, oh, I'm only charge, especially if you are the lesser earning party in a couple, which many women, for whatever reason happen to be. The mindset is to charge the whole childcare expense against the lower earning party. And then for many cases, women are not making that much more after taxes than what their child care costs would be, and so that could be very discouraging. You're like, well, why am I even working again? If you don't want to go back to work, that's great, but I would not use that as the argument because a it's a joint expense, so it's split between you and your partner if you are co parenting with someone. Second, it's kind of like saying, well, I'm not going to go to college because because for a couple of years I'll be spending more than I'm taking in. I mean, this is an investment in your lifelong earning potential. Eventually, if you stay in the workforce, your salary will rise and your childcare costs will fall. So like an economist would not look at this as a point in time sort of calculations. Really, you have to amortize it over your entire life. And there's very good evidence that women who take a couple of years out of the workforce never regain their earning potential. One of the numbers from an economist named Sylvia Ann who's looked at a lot of this, is that taking three years out winds up in a thirty seven percent reduction in overall earning lifetime earning potential. So that's a huge hit, right. Viewed that way, like a couple of years of paying for full time childcare is it's an investment. Now, I've had colleagues, you know, because I'm I'm in pediatric endochronology, which yes, is a physician, but it's not a terribly high paying field. And I've i had a colleague make that exact argument, which was like, you know, after taxes, this is like all of my salary, et cetera. But yeah, you have to look at the short term and the long term and what do you want to be doing and what is what is your you know, career trajectory going to look like ten fifteen years from now. And I agree with you. You have to look at it as an outlay from both parties, not from your own, Like that is just not how the math works, so I think that's a really important point. Well, we could go on about this all day, but I know you people don't want to listen to a podcast forever. It's got to end at some point. This has got to be like a long community sorry commute, so maybe you get this on the way home as well. But this is a topic we'd love to talk about. If you have questions about this, feel free to send them to us. You can email me el vander kamat yahoo dot com. Sarah. Let's talk our love of the weeks. Now, obviously we both love our childcare setups at this point. Yes, I do super in love with my childcare setup, but love it. But your other love this week, My current love is this is really basic and I feel like kind of like duh about this one. But I am kind of love in the library right now. I never use the library at big admission of guilt when we lived in North Carolina, and it took me a while to kind of figure out the system here. But my husband has turned me on to reserve it books. So I don't really have time or maybe I just don't have the willingness to go in and like browse around. But you can actually just reserve whatever you want online and pick it up just like you were, you know, going to a store and getting free loot. And it's like we actually in Miami Beach have this mobile library, which I don't know if this isn't other communities, but they'll they'll drive around the locations near you and you can actually deliver the books you've ordered to your mobile library. So I feel like I have this like free book delivery service that should have been really really obvious that I am just now learning to enjoy. And we use it for kids books too, because you know, you don't necessarily want I certainly love buying books. I'm not against it if it's right, I'm sure, I'm like, this isn't. But and and the truth is, there are many books that like I'm invested in and I want to own, like a favorite author, Laura, I own. I think I own like all of your books. So if that makes you feel any better, support that you can everyone buy my, borrow the other ones. And when it's ref friends especially, you know, you often want to own it, or if you want to pass it to friends. But when it's just like trying out some new fiction, or if it's kids books that you kind of want to have a rotating selection. Try out your library if you haven't, because you may find it as useful as I have a great idea. Libraries are wonderful and it's a great way to entertain kids too, Like if you know you've got them on a rainy Saturday, bring them to the kids library in your community. It's a great way to spend some time and then have them have something to do when they come home. So I was going to do a different level of the week, but now that we're on the book topic, I'm gonna I'm going to do my book love of the week, which is that I have for several years been reading the Modern Missus Darcy blog Me too, which I love. We both love this blog. It's and Vogel is a woman who lives in Kentucky. I want to say, but she is a reads everything, and of course now it's become her job to read everything. But her book recommendations are awesome. She will put posts which are like ten books that are over six hundred pages that you won't mind reading or something like that, or or ten paid ten books that will make you want to book a trip and so there's just these lists of books, and so if you're trying to figure out, well, what should I read next, which, by the way, is the name of her podcast, What should I Read Next? These are great recommendations and I have almost never gone wrong from her descriptions. I read some of her descriptions and I'm like, Oh, that's really not going to be a book for me. But if I read her description and it sounds like a book for me, it always is. So I would I would recommend that if you know, listen to what Should I Read Next? Or read Modern Missus Darcy, and then get your list, put it on hold at your library, and maybe even if you're like Sarah, the library will come to you with these titles and you'll be reading a lot more. We're going to do an episode later on how to find more time to read, so that'll be another one you'll have to listen for. So this brings us to the Q and a section which Sarah, We've got. We've got a question about mental load this week. Do you do you have them? And I don't know if we can fully do it justice in this segment, but we can at least start the question, said my question is about the mental load of your job. How do you check out of work mode when you're home. I'm not in medicine, but as a teacher, Thank you. I love teachers, especially this time of year. My job is pretty all consuming September through June. Even if I'm not at work, I'm thinking about it. How could that lesson go better? How could I help that class work better today? Am I giving enough feedback? This is my first school year with the child of my own, and I worry about this. I don't have an easy answer for you. I do think some people are much more natural compartmentalizers than others, and I think over the years, I have sort of moved towards pretty heavy compartmentalizing, both because I find I'm more effective in whatever realm I'm in and if I'm not thinking too much about the other one, and because it's kind of just more enjoyable for me and for me My biggest strategy with this is my common strategy for a lot of things, but writing things down planning. So if I have concern like that at work, like you know, something's bothering me, I'll write down in my calendar for the next day. At little checkbox that's like discussed with office manager this ex concern because once it's in physical form somewhere that I can see that, I'm gonna handle it later. I'm not going to be thinking about it the whole time I'm doing the kids' bedtime routine. If I don't do that, if I don't have something to kind of release that idea that's hanging over my head, then it comes back to me and floats back to me and floats back to me. So for me, planning really really and I guess sort of scheduling scheduling time to be frustrated or fred about different things has really helped me separate the realms and it's like a necessary survival thing for me. Yeah, I would agree with that a lot, making notes of the time when you're going to think about it. But I would also suggest possibly viewing this from a different perspective too, which is it's not a bad thing to be enough into your job that you want to think about it. Like, I love that this teacher is saying, how can I help my class work better? How can I make that lesson go better? Like what feedback do I have for myself about how I presented it? That's what makes you better at your job over time, And so how much worse if you weren't thinking about these things, right, Like if you could just like, oh, I don't care about my job, you know, anymore than what I've done on any given day. So I would say, if you have it from that perspective, write down when you're going to think about it, or maybe give yourself a little bit of time at night as sort of this is my thinking about how I could improve on the day, maybe writing in a journal of like this went, well, these are some things I'd like to do better. I think having that reflective time can also help you keep a good perspective on it, or maybe sort of blending the two. See if you can find a time when you're not going to think about it, so let it ruminate the rest of the time. Like Laura is saying, like maybe if it's healthy for you to kind of be there, then that's okay. But then maybe say to yourself, well, but except for between the hours of you know, seven and eight thirty, I'm going to be fully you know, focused on something. So kind of a combination approach. Well, thank you all so much for listening to this. This has been episode for on childcare and other such things, and we will be back next week with more. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.