Should our child go back to daycare?

As daycares start to reopen, we’ve been receiving many questions about whether families should put their children back in. It’s complicated, but here are some considerations.

If this were just a local disease outbreak that was expected to pass in 3 months, it would be worth keeping kids out for that period. But it’s looking pretty certain that COVID is here to stay, and despite some progress with a vaccine, I wouldn’t hang my hat on hopes that it will make it all the way through trials and be able to stop COVID before most of us catch it. So we’re faced with the question: if COVID will still be here in 6 months, possibly even in higher numbers, is there any point in keeping kids out of daycare now only to face it a few months later?

For most children, unless they have severe underlying medical issues, the risks to their health of going back in daycare are very low. Coronavirus tends to be mild or even symptom free in children. And while the Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome you may have read about is more serious, it is fortunately rare, and not being exposed to normal childhood viruses at all can also have health consequences. Not to mention that unless a miracle happens, there’s a good chance your child is going to catch COVID-19 at some point anyway. So for most healthy kids of a “social” age (~18 months and up), the harms of inadequate social contact for early development surely outweigh any benefits to the child of simply postponing coronavirus by a few months.

For most families, the bigger consideration may actually be with the adults in the family if your child brings it home. In absence of any pre-existing medical conditions or old age, while there’s still some risk at least the risk is lower. And since daycare is one of your family’s primary support systems, you may want it to be one of the first things you reincorporate (with newfound precautions of course) once public health authorities deem it safe and appropriate. If COVID is going to be around for years, we will need to find a sustainable way to proceed with reasonable precautions.

The alternative would be to set up a nanny share with another family who will choose to essentially shelter with you. This way your child could at least have one similarly aged child to interact with in a reasonably sustainable way that is not quite as high risk as full on daycare. This option is typically more expensive and more difficult to arrange, and of course there’s not quite as much social experience as a child would get in a daycare setting, so it might be best reserved for families at higher risk.

I know this is a difficult choice for everyone, and there is no right answer. But I hope this perspective helps a bit at least.

Stay safe out there, we’ll get through this together!