Choosing a day care.

Sally - posted on 05/28/2012

All the things you said, but another question I ask is what us the turn over of staff? Ive worked in child care and at one center over a year there was 7 different group leaders in one room, the children were very unsettled.

Joy - posted on 05/28/2012

How much time is spent outside and how much tv is allowed are also on my list. The first daycare we had a recommendation from a friend, but most mornings when I left my daughter the TV was on and when I picked her up in the afternoon the TV was on -and sometimes my baby was strapped into a carseat to watch the TV and couldn't not watch it if she wanted. Sometimes the shows were very inappropriate for her age too!

When my college friends opened a daycare I switched her to theirs as soon as I could. My friends' have a very similar parenting style to mine and when they can they have the kids outside playing in the dirt (clean dirt is good for children.) They rarely watch TV, but when they do all of the shows they are allowed to watch are ones that I approve of too.

Kelina - posted on 05/28/2012

When I went looking for a friend it had to be clean and organized. And in an actual building be it a house or something else. When I got to one place I pulled into the driveway simply to turn around. The front door was open and there was a dog in the yard, there was stuff stacked by the front door and stuff all over the backyard. On top of that, it was in a terrible neighborhood.

Elizabeth - posted on 05/28/2012

Definitely all of the above were things we wanted to make sure of. We asked a ton of questions. Honestly, though, we didn't have to ask too many questions at any of the places we went to. It was based on a feel we got when we walked in and how we saw things happen as we were there.
We don't have a choice to not do daycare or have family watch them.

Amy - posted on 05/26/2012

After I had my oldest son we visited one home daycare and called 3 centers on the phone and decided that we would not be doing daycare. My husband and I work opposite shifts so we don't have to do daycare and my MIL will take them a couple of hours at night when needed.

My husband works 4 days on 2 days off, I work as a retail manager so my schedule changes every week. There were a few reasons we opted to do what we did, one reason was because our schedule varies so much that the centers wanted a set schedule for obvious reasons but we were not going to be sending our son if we were home and we didn't want to pay a daycare center if they weren't actually watching our son.
The home day care was a little scary, the kids were outside playing when we showed up but it wasn't a grassy area it was more like a big sandbox or dirt pit. The daycare providers was not outside with them. After I read the contract I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Basically she wanted to be paid on holidays not to work, she wanted 2 weeks vacation paid where we would have to find other daycare, we would have to pay for any time that we weren't there if our child was sick, or we were on vacation. I understand that this is how they earn a living but where we live is daycare is outrageous and I couldn't see working and handing 60% of my paycheck over to someone else, this is why we opted to work opposite schedules so that our kids wouldn't have to be in daycare.

Megan - posted on 05/26/2012

Will not send my kids to daycare with all the terrible things you hear these days but if I did i would definitely be willing to spend more to get exactly what wanted for them