How To Find a (Safe) Daycare For Your Kids

Now, that your baby is here, who will take care of him or her? When it happened to me, I had no idea how to find a daycare for my daughter. Searching for a daycare for my first child was a long and overwhelming process. Sometimes even scary.

Because finding a daycare is one of the most critical decisions about motherhood. That’s why, in this series of posts, I am sharing step by step what has helped me find the right daycares for my daughters (and the mistake that I made too).

I spent weeks and months evaluating daycares. I was determined to find the right one but I had no idea where to start or what I was looking for.

Because of that, I wasted my time visiting daycare after daycare. I even went to daycares that were far from me or completely out of my budget.

The good news is that I kept improving the process until I finally found the best daycare for my daughter.

With my second baby, I conducted better research from the beginning. That alone saved me time by only visiting the daycares that matched my needs better.

I compared my options faster and better since I knew exactly what I needed.

Evaluate your daycare options

The first step of the process is to look at your daycare options when neither you or your partner can stay with the little one.

Those daycare options can be:

• A close family member or friend
• Babysitter or Nanny
• Daycare center or home daycare

Sometimes, you start considering one option (i.e. babysitter) but end up with another one (i.e. daycare center). My daughters have been with a family member, friend, daycare center, and home daycare. But for this blog posts series, I will focus on the third option: daycare centers and home daycares.

Let’s start with the basics…

An in-home or home daycare is a small childcare inside a family’s residence where they normally take care of a small group of kids, while a daycare center is a bigger facility that takes care of a larger number of kids. The maximum number of kids allowed in a daycare is based on different factors such as the number of staff members, the age of children, and state regulations.

When to start looking for a daycare?

The sooner you start looking for a daycare the better. Doing it sooner, rather than later, has its advantages such as:

• having more time to look for a daycare
• less pressure to make a decision in a very short period of time
• more time to compare, plan, and visit daycares
• having enough time to make adjustments to your budget, if necessary
• being able to go back and review more daycares
• more chances to ensure a spot at the daycare when needed

Steps on How to Find a Daycare

In this series of blog posts, I will explain step by step how to find a daycare for your baby. Here, I will show you the same steps I use to find a daycare for my kids. 

To find a daycare, we will go over the following topics throughout this series:

• Identifying your needs
• Pre-screening a daycare
• Daycare Tour
• Choosing a daycare

What To Look For In A Daycare

Trying to find out what to look for in a daycare is probably one of the first questions that you have in mind. But there’s no magic answer to it. Not even a right or wrong answer. In order to know what to look for, you need to find out what you want from a childcare provider. In other words, you need to identify your needs and expectations.

Let’s go over some of the daycare services to give you an idea of what to expect. But, keep in mind that the availability of these services may vary by child care, owner, and even location.

Your daycare may offer:

• Extended Hours – Allows early drop-off and/or late pick up. You may need to pay an additional fee but you end up with the peace of mind knowing that somebody is taking care of your child while you are stuck in a meeting, presentation, or training.

• Educational Programs – Many child cares have educational programs tailored to different age groups. These programs mainly focus on the development of learning, creativity, physical and social skills. Some even offer sign language or foreign languages such as Spanish or Mandarin.

• Security & Safety – You take a lot of precautions in your home to keep your child safe. The security and safety of the childcare shouldn’t be less. It includes things like locked front doors only accessed by authorized personnel, daily sign-in forms, monitors in the front, unique family codes, sanitized toys, cameras, fire extinguishers, and more.

• Internet Video Monitoring –  Thanks to technology, you have the opportunity to look at your child in real-time through your phone or computer. If available, the daycare provides you with instructions on how to enroll in this extra service. Once you enroll, you are able to see your child and any other child or adult in that area. This has created mixed feelings about the service. While some parents love the idea of looking at what their child is doing at any particular time, other parents don’t feel comfortable with the lack of privacy.

• Communication – Daycares communicate with parents in different ways. Some communicate more than others. The last home daycare I used was great at this. They had daily one on one updates with parents, answered calls, and were available via text messages and emails. That daycare also used the Tadpoles app, which I enjoyed because I had everything in one place. I had notifications to get more diapers, reminders of daycare closings {due to holidays or pre-scheduled vacations}, daily menu with notes on what and how much my daughter ate, and even pictures of my little one throughout the day.

• Activities – Daycare centers also provide different types of activities to keep kids entertained. These activities may include things like a fitness class, art techniques, and puppet shows. Even though these activities are normally offered by daycare centers, home daycares may offer some type of entertainment based on birthdays, holidays, seasons, or just random themes. If you are looking for a long-term daycare, it’s always a good practice to learn about those activities up front. Your baby may be too young to join the activities now but that won’t last for too long.

Now, over to you…

During this first part of the series, you learned the advantages of looking for a daycare sooner rather than later. You also evaluated your daycare options and learned about the daycare services available.  

Now, it’s time to identify your own daycare needs. The daycare worksheets include a form where you can write down your list of daycare needs and sort them into three categories: must-have, want to have, and nice to have.

After listing and sorting your daycare needs, you are ready for the second part of this blog post series. There, I will show you how to conduct a pre-screening process to help you find a daycare near you. See you there!

Take me to Part 2: A Daycare Near You>