Going to college while raising a young child can be a very difficult task. There are always daycares to put your children in full time but many parents can not afford the full time daycare costs as well as pay for college all at the same time. Daycare does not come cheap. Where I am from to put your child in to a daycare it costs you $28 per day for 8 hours or less and anymore than 8 hours you end up paying $43 per day. Many parents that are in college full time do not have time to have jobs that can help them afford these high costs. Even if they hold a part time job, it is merely enough to pay for rent and other necessities. There is always the option of child care subsidy where the Social Services department pays for your child's daycare up to a certain amount. But to be approved for subsidy, is a long process where you still end up paying the child care prior to being accepted. Some people are on the waiting list for subsidy for over a year depending on where you live.

I myself raise a 5 year old while attending college full time to achieve my diploma as a drug and alcohol counsellor. I am now approved for child care subsidy but before I was I could barely afford to keep him in the cheapest daycare in town. Next year he starts school in grade 1. He will be in school 5 days a week for the majority of the day which is great, but what if my time table conflicts with the hours I have to be at the school to pick him up or drop him off? There are no daycares where I go to school that are willing to pick children up from school to take them to daycare or drop them off in the mornings. Where I used to live in Durham there were plenty of daycare centres that had school pick up and drop off programs. I think that smaller communities need to implement these types of daycares as I know of a lot of parents this could help out. If there is anyone looking for a great place to start a daycare may I suggest Peterborough Ontario which is where I attend college and daycares willing to pick up and drop off are important and more than needed.

There are some things you can do to ease your busy schedule and ease the hassle of trying to make every ones schedules work together. One thing I found helped me a lot and I will surely do next year, is to take classes online. While I attended college full time, any classes in my schedule that made other things in my life more difficult I switched to online learning. It made it so much easier as I could just work on these classes when I had the free time to do so. So if I have an 8:00am class and my son has to be at school for 8:30 am then I can just take this class online, drop him off at school, come home and begin some of my work until my next scheduled class.

You can also study as a part time student at every college. This would free up a few days a week for you or even half a day every day as you only take 4 classes per week. If you have a young child who attends kindergarten every other day, you could work out your school schedule to fit your child's school schedule. This way you are home when your child is home.

There are other online colleges that allow you to just work solely online. These schools tend to be a little more expensive and take about double the time to complete but if you have too busy of a life to fit school in but would really like a new career, the extra money is worth it. You can take almost anything at these online courses as you can at a normal college and they are just as credible.

Going to college full time while raising a child is a very scary thought. I was hesitant about it but now that I am doing it, I can manage. And I'm sure almost anyone can. When I started college last year I was living on my own with just me and my son and although our lives were as hectic as can be we managed. I now have the help of my wonderful fiancé when it comes to things like pick ups and drop offs, which also helps a lot.

Hopefully knowing that there are people out there that managed to have the best of both worlds, it will encourage you to go out and do as you want to while still being a great parent.