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Day Care
There are a number of different child care options for working parents: nannies, live-ins, family members, au pairs, and day care centers. For now we will focus on the day care center option. Enrolling your child in a day care center can be a difficult decision for parents. Feelings of guilt sometimes arise from leaving your child with other people while you have to work or even simply try to find time for yourself. Feeling uneasy about leaving your child's safety and development in the hands of someone else, even if it's just a little while, is another common concern.
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Some Things to Consider |
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Positives
- Increased interactions with peers
- Variety of planned activities
- Prepared, balanced diets
- Monitoring of staff
- Care is available even if usual staff member calls off sick
- A break for parent
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Negatives
- Less 1:1 personal attention
- Increased numbers of colds
- Some centers do not allow attendance if child is sick
- Adjustment to non-home environment
- Can be expensive, especially if multiple children enrolled
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Things to Look For |
- Accreditation: State to state requirements may vary
- Student ratio: Some common ratios are Infants--1 to 4, Toddlers--1 to 6, and Pre-school 1 to 10.
- Developmental sensitivity: Day cares often provide weekly teacher plans. Look to see if the daily activities seemed to be structured around the development of your child.
- Low staff turnover: Frequent turn over of teachers and transitions may effect your child's sense of security
- Watch & observe the flow of the room: See how your child's staff and room operates on an usual day. Watch how the teachers handle the children when the volume and stress levels go up.
- Recommendation from other parents: Find out what other parents have to say about your local day cares.
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Latest Research:
As you might expect, your family's day care experience hinges around your child's day care staff. An enthusiastic, caring teacher with an awareness of a child's developmental needs can be a boost to a child's growth. In a recent study, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) followed the growth in cognitive and language abilities of 800 children. Follow-up studies of problem-solving, reasoning, attention, vocabulary and sentence complexity were done at 15, 24, and 36 months of age. Sarah L. Friedman, coordinator, reported:
- The amount of time spent in daycare (0 to 60 hours per week) did not lower cognitive and language development.
- The quality of care was the more important factor for a child's development. Children that received "positive caregiving" (hugs, responsiveness to child's needs, and verbal stimulation) scored higher on cognitive and language tests.
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