If You Take Babies And Young Toddlers...

[Margarete]

how many babies do you take at a time (w/o assistant)?? how old does one have to be to take a new baby? Not talking state regs or anything, but just your personal preference.

I personally liked to wait till they were at least a year old, but 14-15+ months was even better. I am in a situation where I may need to take a new baby when my current one is only 6-7 months old. I am really hesitant to do this but if not I lose a family (and their older child) and then have to start over with new families and not sure I want to deal with that right now. Plus thinking of the longevity - I have a few older toddlers, they'll all probably leave at once next year so it would be nice to have these younger ones in the mix at that time. So, deal with a few rough months of 2 babies or no way??

I would take the younger child. With your own being 6-7 months older they will be in perfect playmate/peer age range! My daughter and the twins I watch are 6 months apart, and it has been great!.. but yes a lot of work for a while, mostly with feeding and diaper changes, but it gets easier as they get older (work on self feeding early), and goes by fast.

[LK5kids]

I will take one infant and one toddler ( age 12 mo-24 mo).

[LoraJenkins]

If I could I would take infants only. Matter of fact, before I became licensed, I had 5 infants at once, ages 4 months triplet boys, 4 month DCG and 8 month DCB. I LOVED it!!!!! I got them all on the same scheduled. All had bottles at the same time, napped at the same time and diaper changes were all done back to back unless someone had a BM. Now that I am licensed, I can only have 2....but WISH I could enroll more

[craftymissbeth]

Only accept new children 12 months and younger. For me, the younger the better. I realized after this summer with my 6 yo ds that I just cannot handle mixed ages. My program is focused on ages newborn - 3 years... I don't provide curriculum based learning so I would understand (and encourage!) parents to pull their child and place them in a DC or preschool that does provide it.

I can take 3 children under 18 months at one time. If I have those spots full then I can only have 3 more children ages 18 months to school age and 2 children school age+. Financially, it's tough right now, but that's ok for me.

Since I have such a small group I don't necessarily need to space them out any certain amount. Though, I would think twice about more than one newborn at a time since their schedules are so all over the place initially.

[Crazy8]

Only accept new children 12 months and younger. For me, the younger the better. I realized after this summer with my 6 yo ds that I just cannot handle mixed ages. My program is focused on ages newborn - 3 years... I don't provide curriculum based learning so I would understand (and encourage!) parents to pull their child and place them in a DC or preschool that does provide it.

I can take 3 children under 18 months at one time. If I have those spots full then I can only have 3 more children ages 18 months to school age and 2 children school age+. Financially, it's tough right now, but that's ok for me.

Since I have such a small group I don't necessarily need to space them out any certain amount. Though, I would think twice about more than one newborn at a time since their schedules are so all over the place initially.

That is kind of what my program is too - most leave around 3.5 yo to go to preschool. The more I think about it the more I want to take it on but now mom threw another wrench in the scenario and I'm wondering if I should just term them now and not take the baby.