Daycare Dilemmas

Daycare is something I am really struggling with right now.  Before we arrived in Sundsvall I was REALLY EXCITED about the Swedish daycare system.  It ranks second for expenditure by government from all OECD countries, not bad. It is highly subsidized, satisfies most/all reccommendations for high quality early childhood education, and works with parents work hours.  Contrast this to the Canadian system of expensive, satisfying few of the overall reccommendations Brilliant.  As with everything the detailed picture is not so easy.

We have been placed at a daycare near our house. Before I describe I need to say that I loved the daycare we were going to put Beth at in Toronto.  I spent a lot of time researching it, meeting the people and arranging her care.  It was a great place with caring, well trained instructors and I believe she would have thrived there.  It's a hard standard to live up to. 

Our daycare here is super convenient.  Really at the age of 1 she could almost walk there on her own, it's literally out the back door. It's opening hours are also very convenient for us for work.  But that's where my love of the place ends.  All daycares here have some fantastic basics that are universal.  They provide the children with breakfast, lunch, and snack.  They spend as much time as possible outdoors.  If we want to provide her with SSL (swedish as a second language) support we can.  Some common oddities are also included, like babies nap in their own strollers, outside, in winter.  But things like that are universal and we're learning to love the fresh air for her.

But this daycare is small, and is placed between an apartment building and dirt yard.  It doesn't have many trees and they generally play on the pavement.  The smallness is fine, except it means the big and small kid areas are easily mixed and small toys end up on the floor in the baby area. The staff seem very nice and caring, but there's few of them to a lot of children.  I saw toddlers climbing on top of picnic tables or eating dirt for a while before stopped.  I may be a snob, but it just made me uncomfortable. 

So we've been shopping.  We looked at a parent co-op daycare that is beautiful, has huge bright areas for the kids to play in, the teacher's seem really invested, as are the parents.  But its far away and we would need to be involved during the daytime occassionally, not so good for our new full time jobs.  The opening hours are also a little bit less which may mean mornings are a little tighter.

Ultimately I don't know what to do.  I feel so much pressure to make the best decision for her, and if I make the wrong one now it will ultimately cause her to drop out of highschool pregnant and tatooed (not that tatooes are wrong).  I know that's a bit extreme, but it really feels like the pervasive culture of parenting right now.  Look at the 3 year olds who receive tutoring in NYC. That's normal there!  I never want to be that parent, but I also don't want to be the parent who ranks my convenience higher than my child's education.  I also don't want to over react, and if you know me at all ( which some of you do too well) I also have a wee bit of that tendancy.

Most of the time I feel that I am writing into the void, or a note home so family feels they are experiencing our trip with us.  But this post I would love comments on.  Anyone else know what I should do?  Sometimes being an adult sucks, I preferred the level of decision making of what colour crayon to use.  Somedays anyway.