You wouldn’t think that finding the perfect daycare spot for your children would be like playing a game of Mastermind, but that’s what it turned out to be. I know this because my husband and I almost cracked the code. Almost.
In Mastermind, one player secretly creates a code using a sequence of coloured pegs, and the other player tries to guess the exact combination within a limited number of turns. With some feedback from the code-maker, the guesser works to logically narrow down the possibilities and deduce the secret code before running out of attempts.
Using this analogy, being the mastermind means cracking the code to secure an affordable, local, good-quality daycare spot for your children when you need it.
It shouldn’t be so difficult, but to succeed you need a combination of luck and strategy. And to make matters more complicated, some players are given more pegs (aka resources) than others, making it impossible for some people to ever crack the code.
Without further ado, let’s play.
Strategy #1: apply early and often
Almost the very second after finding out that we were pregnant with our first child, we did what we had heard must be done to secure a daycare spot in Vancouver: we signed our unborn baby up for dozens of daycare waiting lists. Some were places we truly wanted. Others were far from our home and inconvenient, but we applied for these anyway to maximize our chances of securing a spot.
We had our hearts set on a daycare centre that we could see from our window. We would be able to walk there. We knew our child would receive good care. And, to our delight, it happened to be part of the provincial government’s $10-a-day program. That would be our jackpot.
But being on these waitlists can be frustrating. The rumour is that they are two to three years long—but that is about all the information you get. Often, you can’t call the daycares, and emails go unanswered. The uncertainty itself is nerve-wracking: how does a two-year waitlist fit with a family’s schedule? Even if you sign your baby up as soon as they are conceived, by the time the mother returns to work when the baby is one year old, around 21 months will have passed. That can leave a months-long gap between when a parent is expected to return to work and when a daycare spot becomes available. That’s where many people panic. That’s when many turn to private nannies.
So, we studied the board, trying to plan our next move. If daycare is a game of Mastermind, then the waitlists are the first clues—but they tell you almost nothing. Without clear rules, parents are left to invent their own strategies, hoping that one of them will eventually line up the right combination of luck and timing.
Strategy #2: stall until the children are older
For several reasons—one of them being the hope of better chances of securing daycare when our baby was older we opted for the 18-month parental leave, sharing it between the two of us. But despite our now toddler being already 1.5-years-old by the time we needed a daycare spot, nothing had opened up. In fact, we had not been contacted by any of the childcare centres we were waitlisted for. It was strange to observe how some families received offers and others didn’t. Presumably, these families qualified for priority standing on their waitlist, but at times this still appeared random to us (luck #1: qualify for waitlist priority).
Now we were in a position where both of us needed to return to work but had no childcare. For some families this means that one of the parents, usually the mother, leaves their job to fill in the gap since hiring a nanny often makes little financial sense unless the parent’s income is above a certain threshold. We were fortunate because my sister-in-law was able to take care of our daughter temporarily as a stopgap. So, for a month we had a live-in nanny who generously slept on a cot on the floor of our tiny apartment while we figured out something else (resource #1: get family help).
That “something else” came in the form of a second baby (luck #2: easy pregnancy). I was able to start my maternity leave three months before my due date and take care of our toddler. If I had thought pregnancy was hard the first time, being nine months pregnant while chasing a wild toddler taught me otherwise!
Then another challenge took me by surprise. On most weekdays, I would take the kids to nearby playgrounds, but instead of finding them full of kids we usually found them empty. My toddler would list all her friends’ names, asking if they could come and play with her. One by one, I needed to tell her that all her friends were at daycare and couldn’t play with her. She often refused to play alone, so we would just walk back home, both of us disappointed. The need for a daycare is most often framed as a service for the parents that allows them to go to work. But our kids have needs too. Even though they love their parents, they also crave time with their peers.
Finally, an offer
When our daughter had turned two and our son was three months old, we finally received a daycare offer. However, it did not come through any of our waitlists. A part-time spot opened up at our daughter’s best friend’s daycare, and her parents kindly recommended us.
Though the daycare had an extensive waitlist, it was not even consulted, and— to our mild discomfort—we skipped the line entirely (resource #2: have the right connections). It wasn’t on our list—it was farther away and required an hour-long round-trip bike commute—but it was still better than nothing. And our daughter loved hanging out with her best friend all day long.
We signed our daughter up for two days a week, as full-time care would have been too expensive while one of us was on parental leave and receiving Employment Insurance.
And here is one of the ironies of the system: receiving EI disqualifies you from receiving B.C’s Affordable Childcare Benefit, which is meant to help lower-income families pay for daycare.
Although there were times I was grateful to spend more time with my daughter, I also felt bitter—bitter over a system that does not seem to adequately care for people.
Strategy #3: know when a new waitlist opens
About half a year later, we received news that a new daycare would be opening in our neighbourhood. It would be closer than our daughter’s current part-time daycare and seemed to have a good chance of eventually becoming one of the coveted $10-a-day programs. So, on the very second the waitlist opened, we added both children’s names to it. They held a lottery with the early applicants’ names—and we won (luck #3: win an actual lottery). We now had spots secured for both children.
In accepting the spots, we knew the first year would be expensive with two kids in daycare. But we had high hopes that the centre would become $10-a-day after its first year of operation. All the other daycares in the same organization were, and their track record seemed promising.
Then, just a few weeks after we had registered our children, we saw the news: the BC government was pausing the $10-a-day daycare program, and no new facilities would be admitted over the next three years. With two children in daycare, we would be paying $2,200 per month for the foreseeable future. The government explained the pause as a response to “a bad, unfair system,” calling the $10-a-day program a “lottery.” It didn’t feel like a simple lottery to us—it felt like Mastermind, a game we thought we had won but had just lost.
What made this news especially frustrating is that there is a straightforward way to fix this system: base daycare subsidies more closely to family income, not on who manages to crack the code. To us, the announcement felt like a rather transparent way to save money in the provincial budget at the expense of families like us. Others already in this system would continue to benefit while we were shut out.
I was working when I heard the news. I texted a nearby friend, who lived close by my office in the Downtown Eastside: “Are you at home? I need someone to cry with.” She welcomed me in, made tea and baked chocolate chip cookies. Canada’s women’s hockey team had just lost to the U.S. in the Milano Olympics, and it felt like an oddly fitting moment to cry and talk about the injustices of the world.
Winning the lottery, with a pricey ticket
In the end, securing two spots at our daycare was like winning a lottery. We can walk to the daycare, making the drop offs and pick-ups very convenient. It’s a beautiful, new facility with excellent toys and loving staff, whom our children adore.
But if this was a lottery, it has taken a very expensive lottery ticket to win it. In total, getting our two children through the remainder of their daycare years will cost us more than $80,000 (resource #3: have money). When my husband and I are both back at full-time jobs, we fall into the affordability gap—our family income is just too high to qualify for the affordable childcare benefit, but too low to be able to comfortably afford to cover our expenses, with rent and childcare now comprising 60 per cent of our monthly income.
It has also been a long process. We spent years studying the board, trying strategy after strategy, hoping that luck would swing our way, and using our limited resources as well as possible. What might seem like a simple budget decision to policymakers felt, to me, like losing a game of Mastermind.
That is what the daycare system in British Columbia feels like to me: a game where the rules are hidden and the pieces are unevenly distributed. Some players start with extra clues; others begin with fewer pegs. Some get extra lucky. We almost cracked the code. Almost.
SAANA WALKER IS A CAMPUS RESIDENT.