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Pros:
- Sanitation and child health taken seriously
- Regular handwashing, bootie shoe coverings, and glove wearing (long before COVID-19, y'all)
- Safe feeding, meaning bottles only made at home and labeled with date, contents, and kid's name
- Good ratio of teachers to babies (1:4, sometimes 1:3)
- Good activities, even for bitty babies, sensory exercises, tummy time
- Pay weekly, or pay monthly. Monthly gets you a discount!
- Teachers and staff clearly care a lot about kids
Cons:
- Morning traffic in the area can be... frustrating. There's a Comcast back in the industrial park, and an Altec Roofing, so if you get there at just the wrong time in the morning, you might have to survive the flood of vans and trucks.
- That's basically all the Cons.
For the longer story:
Our baby boy was due in September 2019, and my husband and I were slacking on getting childcare arranged so we finally started looking at places in October (I know, please don't judge us).
We live in Martin County, but we both work in West Palm Beach, so we were looking for something at either end of our commute.We started with Martin County so we would have a short drive to drop BB off in the morning, or if we needed to drop him off but didn't need to go to WPB, but it has almost N O T H I N G worth looking into for an infant. They're either for 12mo+, full, too expensive, or some combination of, up to and including, all three.
Village Boulevard KinderCare had been on the radar from the start, as it's about 15 minutes drive from both our workplaces (in good weather, with no traffic, and if the Traffic Light Goddess smiles on you; 20-30 under normal conditions) and though there weren't many Google reviews (and no Yelp reviews at the time), what was there was extremely positive.
Hubs and I called the center, and to our delight, it was a direct line in! No IVR-press-1-to-speak-to-another-robot! We made an appointment to come in and take a look around the next day during Universal Nap Time. We brought 3-week-old BB with us, and he charmed everyone (as is only proper for any brand new baby; they're all adorable af). Jhai, the center director, and Angela, the assistant director, were both a joy to meet.
They take infant and child health seriously in this place. Since we had a bitty baby, one of us stayed in the foyer area with him while the other was shown all the things in the infant room, and then we switched. Whoever was going in the room had to put on booties to cover their shoes so the floor didn't get dirt and germs from outside tracked in. The teachers in the infant room wear those booties all day long, warm up bottles and food while wearing gloves, and they do diaper changes with gloves and a new cover paper (like at the doctor's office!) for every change. This was standard, even before COVID-19 became a thing. After that, restrictions on entry to areas beyond the foyer were put in place, and then restrictions on entry to the building, plus PPE for staff.
Speaking of bottles, they send home bottle labels because they practice safe feeding, and the only one to make the bottles is the baby's parent/guardian. That way, your baby doesn't get someone else's formula or breastmilk by accident. Speaking of breastmilk, those labels are RED instead of white, so it's absolutely clear that there's a difference.
We've been bringing our baby here since he was 8 weeks old. He's nearly 7 months old, now, and we still just love bringing him here. When he starts school in a few years, it's up in Martin Co. I'm not looking forward to his last day at VBKC.
We've been working from home now for about three weeks because of the pandemic, so BB hasn't seen them since then. They're keeping his spot open and listing us as drop-in until things settle down. I can't express how much that helps us. Though our family isn't in need of daily care, there are a *lot* of essential workers out there who do, and these guys are awesome for supporting them. We can't wait to go back!