What is Your Child’s Daycare Doing When You Aren’t Around?

We’re willing to be that there is nothing in your life more valuable to you than your baby. When you become a parent, all of the things that you used to hold dear seem less important, and your greatest priority becomes your baby. With that in mind, one of the most important choice that you have to make is which child care center you’ll entrust the care of your precious baby with. Afterall, your child will spend much of their waking hours at the child care center you choose; it is not a decision you want to make through trial and error. This is particularly important if you are looking for infant care, since infants aren’t able to tell you if they aren’t being taken good care of.

To help ensure that you find the very best child care center for your child, we’ve put together a list of tips:

1. Pay attention to what like-minded parents say.
   Obviously, you want to ensure your baby isn’t in a situation where their neglected or abused. However, much of finding the right child care center for them is far less obvious than that. Do they correct the children in a way that meshes well with your own parenting style (because when a child spends all day every day with a care provider, there are going to be learning opportunities from time to time)? Do they engage in play and teach the children skills that prepare them for school? Do they promote character building, such as kindness and consideration among the children? How do they guide the children through conflict resolution (another inevitable situation that could be utilized to help a child learn how to handle problems… or could have a negative impact on the child’s development if handled poorly)? These are all answers that are difficult to gauge from a brochure.
   
   One of the most effective ways to get an idea if a child care center jives with your parenting approach is to ask other parents who have similar ideology. If you get a good review from a parent who raises their kids in a way that you raise your own kids, it’s a good sign that you’ve found a child care center that will also support your parenting.


2. Put two feet on the ground.
   In doing your research for child care centers, you can get a lot of information from the facility website and from talking to other parents, but you can’t get a full picture until you see it for yourself. When you tour a facility in person, you can get a feel for the environment. You can make sure that the juju of the four walls that will surround your baby is positive for them. You can see and feel and smell the surroundings and get a better picture of the surroundings than you’d ever gain otherwise.
   
   We’ll throw this in for free. While you do on-site tours, it is incredibly important to make sure you meet with the people who will actually be caring for your child. All of the great philosophies in the world mean nothing if the person who actually cares for your child doesn’t have a vibe that jives with your child and your family. That’s an aspect that you can only pick up on in person.


3. Read them up online.
   When you’ve narrowed down your daycare search to a few centers, it’s a good idea to read reviews of experiences that other families have had with the care center. You might get a perspective that you didn’t have just through personal referrals. If a family had a negative experience with a care center, you might be able to save yourself and your child from having the same ordeal.
   
   Keep in mind that some families are impossible to please. A single negative review about a daycare facility might not actually mean the center isn’t a good fit for your family. If you read a review that sounds really out of character for a daycare facility, it wouldn’t hurt reach out to the parent who posted it and get more information, or to just cautiously proceed with your plans. However, if you see a recurring complaint with a childcare facility, you might save yourself a nightmare.

Questions? Share below!