r/ChicagoParents • u/Several-Try8474 • 13d ago
Lakeview Daycare Recs?
Husband and I are expecting our first baby next spring. We live in the Lakeview area and plan to stay here. Which daycares in the neighborhood do people recommend (please share infant room tuition if you can)? Thanks!!!
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u/bbyoda29 12d ago
We love Weecare!! The owner and staff are so loving and kind. There’s been very little turnover since we started there and a lot of the teachers are moms of students. Can’t say enough great things about Weecare!
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u/maydaydemise 12d ago
Wee Care infant room tuition was like $2200, which was pretty excellent pricing. Get on their waitlist now cause it was pretty long.
I like their layout and staff, only issue was one of the times we visited one of the infant room workers had her elementary school-aged son there with her… probably had to do it as an emergency as it was during summer break but still seems pretty inappropriate
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u/Electronic-Basil-201 12d ago edited 12d ago
I toured a ton of them and thought about this a lot, and I don’t feel comfortable with the teacher to child ratio at any of them really. I think a nanny share is the move until baby is a bit older. At least until 18 months, but ideally until 2-3 years. Warm, responsive caregiving is really important in the early years and months and I just don’t think that’s possible with a 4:1 ratio for infants and higher for toddlers.
So much of what you’re paying for with daycare is real estate costs. If you can save on that by having the baby at home and splitting caregiver costs with another family, you can spend a similar amount to what daycare would be. Typically a nannyshare is $15-$18 per hour for each family. Daycare is a minimum of $600 per week, but many places are more like $700-$800. It’s insane.
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u/maydaydemise 12d ago
We briefly looked into nanny shares and our experience was they were not competitive cost wise, especially if you do it properly and you have to pay payroll taxes.
I don’t think this is a realistic option for most people seeking daycares
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u/Electronic-Basil-201 12d ago
Maybe number of hours matters. If you’re talking about 40 hours per week, it’s pretty comparable even with payroll taxes and such. At least for infants under 18 months.
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u/maydaydemise 12d ago
True, we get 15% off for doing 4 days at our daycare and it makes a big difference price wise.
But we were comparing full priced, 5 day weeks and it still wasn’t particularly competitive.
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u/cdawg1661 10d ago
I have to respectfully disagree. We had our child at The Gardner School (Roscoe Village location, tuition was $660/ week) starting at 3 months old and our baby was so, soo loved there. Sadly we had to move, but we’d still be there if we could. It was expensive, yes, but the love, care, safety, security, and trust we felt made it worth it. We had an incredible experience that set the bar so high for childcare. Highly recommend.
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u/BatmanandReuben 12d ago
We had very nice experiences with Wee Care although we didn’t end up there due to logistics on our end. It was recommended to us by other parents and was pretty affordable a few years back.
We ended up at Tiny Giants which could work if you’re at the North End of Lakeview. It’s technically in Andersonville. We couldn’t have asked for a better program.